


Say something

by pamymex3girl



Category: Alles was zählt
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Canonical Character Death, Community: smallfandombang, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 05:47:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6599119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamymex3girl/pseuds/pamymex3girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roman Wilde, ice skater, has died, on the ice he loved so much. </p><p>This is the after. </p><p>Florian tries to live with the death of his brother. Deniz learns how to live in a world without the love of his life. And Roman's friends just try to find a way to move on. </p><p>Because time always goes on and you can't go back. </p><p>All you can do is move on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the smallfandom big bang. It should be noted that everything that happens in alles was zählt after Roman's death doesn't happen in this story, nothing really important, at least not for the story. I hope this story is enjoyed. 
> 
> Thank you monkiainen for the artwork which can be found here: http://wordsbym.livejournal.com/30569.html
> 
> Thank you to naemi for being my beta. Really thank you. All mistakes that are left in the story are completely my own. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Everything belongs to whomever invented it.

****

**_Denial_ **

 

 _Refusal to acknowledge an unacceptable truth or emotion_  
or to admit it into consciousness, used as a  
defence mechanism

 

_~_

_“Say something…”_

_“Everything will be fine, you hear me….”_

_“Everything will be fine.”_

_~_

_They’re the only ones here._

_It makes sense, really, considering the late hour, and yet, for some reason, Roman had almost expected someone else to be there. He’s not sure why, but then he’s not sure about anything anymore. It’s not like it matters.  That is something that dying has done for him: it has shown him the things that truly matter and all those things that never did. (All those fights that never mattered, all those worries that seem like nothing now.) Now that it’s all too late, now that his life is slipping away, now everything is so much cleared. Now that there is nothing he can do to change it, everything seems so simple._

_It’s too late, he knows, but he’s glad for the knowledge anyway._

_Despite the silence, Roman swears he can actually hear them all around him. All of his fans, all those strangers that cheered for him over the years. He can hear them shouting and clapping and celebrating. Maybe he’s finally lost it, maybe he’s starting to hallucinate. He doesn’t care. Not anymore. He knows - he’s always known, deep inside, but he’s never been quite ready to accept the knowledge - that he will never hear it again, so memories are all he has. Despite all of his protestations, despite all of his promises, despite his wish to win first place just one time in his life, he has always known that he doesn’t have the strength to live that long. He doesn’t really have the strength for anything._

_Perhaps he should be resting, perhaps then he’ll live a little longer._

_But this is where he belongs._

_Right here on the ice. Right here where he’s always belonged. And he remembers it, that first time he stood on the ice. His knees had been shaking and he’d been convinced that he would fall the second he stood on the ice, but he did it anyway. And he instantly felt like he finally found something he hadn’t even known had been missing. Like he’d come home. He knows that probably won’t make sense to anyone that hasn’t felt it too, but since he’s never going to have to explain this to anyone, it’s another thing that doesn’t matter. And he thinks that if he has to die - not that he wants to, but it’s not like he actually has a choice - then here on the ice, where he’s always belonged, seems to be the right place. If such a place exist of course. He suspects it doesn’t._

_It’s all over. He knows that now; hell, he’s known if for days._

_He’d hoped for a few more days, at least one more, so he could spend it  with Florian and Deniz. But this is the end. Here on the very spot where he spend so many hours of his life training. Here where him and Jennifer once soared across this ice, where he and Deniz fell in love. In a strange, abstract way, it completely makes sense that he’s going to die here. He doesn’t want it to make sense; why would he want that, after all? He supposes that’s another thing that no longer matters. He wants to make it just a little bit further, just across the ice, to where Denis is standing. He wants to be by his side when he dies, but his legs have finally - finally - lost  all their strength, and suddenly, he’s lying on the cold, cold ice. (He remembers how afraid he’d been that first time on the ice, so afraid that he was going to fall. If he’d known then what he knows now, oh how different his life would have been. Or maybe he wouldn’t have changed anything. He doesn’t quite know.)_

_And then Deniz is holding him, telling him everything will be alright and Roman wants to say something, something meaningful as last words, but all the strength has left his body._

_He used it up skating across the ice one last time._

_‘I love you.’_ He thinks.

‘ _I want to stay. Please Deniz, I want to stay.’_

_‘I love you.’_

_At least, it doesn’t hurt anymore._

_~_

_‘Everything will be fine’_

_~_

It’s cold.

It’s freezing.

This, of course, is something that makes sense. He is sitting on the ice, after all, so cold is pretty much the most logical thing he can feel in this moment. (He’s on his knees, shaking, though not from the cold. Unmoving, Roman is lying in his arms.) This place is supposed to be this cold, it has always _been_ this cold and it will always  be this cold. It’s the only normal thing about this situation, the only thing that is as it should be, and he takes comfort in the fact that there is at least one thing that is still the same.

Because everything else has changed.

And he’s not ready for it.

(Not that he ever would be.)

_It is cold._

_It is freezing._

_And that’s_ normal.

It’s a good thing because it means that no matter how much he has lost - and he has lost it _all_ \- some things won’t ever, ever change.

Not that it matters.

It’s freezing. But he can’t feel it. The numbing cold means nothing to him anymore.  All that matters, all he knows, is that Roman is no longer here with him, and yet he is still here in his arms. Roman is still close enough to touch but no longer there by his side, and he never will be again. Everything else in his life - the ice, the cold, time itself - no longer matters because all that matters, he has now lost. He can’t quite tell if he’s actually no longer feeling the cold or if perhaps he has been sitting here for so long that the cold has, or if, perhaps, he’s simply lost the will to care.

_Because Roman is dead._

And that’s all that matters.

Perhaps he has been sitting here to long - although Deniz could never tell you how much time has passed. Perhaps he’ll freeze here, holding Roman. Perhaps he’ll die here by his side. The thought is random and abstract. He won’t die, he knows that, because that would be far too easy. Besides if he actually were to die here, if he were to give up, and he’d get to wherever Roman has gone, Roman would simply kill him again. Just for giving up. So he knows it won’t happen, and he knows he shouldn’t wish for it to happen, but the thought has occurred to him and a part of him -  a part of him wants to go and be with Roman.

So he won’t have to face life without him.

So he won’t have to feel this pain.

But of course that won’t happen. Of course he can’t change the fact that he’ll have to go through life feeling all this pain.

_He should get up._

Get up and move, call for help, and face the world without Roman in it.

But he can’t.

_He can’t._

He can’t move. He doesn’t _want_ to move. He should move, he should get up, for himself, for Roman, for all the people that loved Roman that don’t know yet that this has happened. But if he moves, if he gets up, if he tells other people, it will actually be real; Roman will truly be dead. He knows he is, of course he does - he’s not an idiot - but he’s not ready to face it, to say it, to allow it to be a part of his life.

He’d like to pretend just a little while longer.

Even though that’s stupid and ridiculous. Because in his arms, Roman lies unmoving and unchanging. He knows the other man is gone, but as long as he sits here he can at least pretend it’s not real. He can pretend it’s nothing but a random nightmare, something he can wake up from at any moment. As long as he stays where he is, frozen in time, Roman will not be gone forever, Roman will still be by his side.

It doesn’t really make sense, he knows that.

But then nothing really does.

 

 

~

_“I don’t want to die.”_

_“I’ll look after you.”_

_~_

 

He’s aware that time passes, but he has no idea how much of it.

It’s not like he truly cares.

His phone is somewhere - he can’t quite remember where he left it. Perhaps it’s simply in the pocket of his jacket or perhaps it’s lying on the ice next to the camera. (Did he even turn the camera off? Does that matter?) He doesn’t remember. But then he doesn’t care either. He should be getting up and calling for help. He knows too much time has already passed, but he can’t make his legs move. He’s frozen in place. (Perhaps he’s actually frozen in place, perhaps tomorrow they’ll have to separate them by force.) Maybe he’ll never be able to get up. Maybe this overwhelming sadness won’t ever allow him to stand again. It hardly matters: someone will show up anyway whether he calls for him or not.

Because no matter how much he might want it to, time won’t simply stop.

Someone will come.

But for right now, for this moment in time, it’s just him and Roman, together on the ice for one last time. The silence is deafening. Another thing that doesn’t matter. For the last few years he’s spend so much time here: playing ice hockey, skating across it with Roman or just watching the other man fly over it. He remembers the first time they stood there together. How they had laughed. How happy they had been back then. He remembers feeling like he’d finally found what he’d been looking for - even if it took him many years and a lot of mistakes to accept that he had. He remembers all those moments that are now forever lost and can never ever be recovered. And there are no new moments to be created,  there’s no more laughing on this ice.

Everything is gone.

And it has left him with nothing but painful memories and deafening silence.

 

~

 

And time, time keeps going.

No matter how hard he might wish for it to stop. No matter how loud he screams, or how long he begs. Time will still keep going.

Morning will come, like it always has before, and there is no way to stop it, or slow it down. He wishes it wouldn’t come. He wants time to freeze, to stop ticking away. He wants to have just a little more time. He’s not ready to get up and got outside and face the world. He’ll never be ready but if he gets just a little more time he might be able to convince himself that he is. He might get strong enough to face the world.

But time cannot be stopped or slowed down.

All it can do is keep going. Forward, because that’s the only way it knows to go.

~

_“Deniz…What’s happened?”_

_~_

Like every morning, Isabelle had her whole day planned out.

Over the years, she learned that life doesn’t always go the way you want it to, of course, but in case it does, Isabelle likes to have a plan.  And she likes things to go according to plan - though very little has gone according to plan since she has gotten to Essen, but that is beside the point - which is probably why she is so annoyed to find them sitting on the ice when she gets there. They’re not skating, they’re just huddled together like they were resting for a moment - and oh, how she wishes that’s all it was. She’d like to go back and never move closer, never discover the truth, and change what she thinks she stumbled on.

Deniz doesn’t even turn when she yells.

_And she knows._

She’d never be able to explain how she knew something bad had happened. Perhaps it’s the way they’re sitting there, or the silence that welcomed her, but somehow, it’s simply in the air. It hardly matters how she knows, but she does, and she doesn’t want to move closer. She realizes that once she truly knows, everything will be completely different.. She has to move closer and see if there’s still something she could do. Perhaps things could still be changed.

They can’t be.

It will haunt her forever.

For the rest of her life, no matter how hard she’ll try, she’ll never be able to remember Deniz and Roman in happier times. Every single time she tries, all she’ll be able to remember is that morning she found them. Deniz’s haunted look and Roman’s unmoving form. Deniz was holding onto Roman tightly, unwilling or perhaps simply unable to let him go. She had to find a way to make him move - there was no way he could stay on the ice much longer, she remembers thinking; it could not possibly be healthy. But for the very first time in her life, she had been completely unable to find any words.

Because it couldn’t be real.

It couldn’t be true.

That moment - Roman and Deniz on the ice, her on her knees beside them - would haunt them forever. It would hang between her and Deniz for the rest of their lives, like a ghost they could never get rid of. Somehow it would color every single one of their conversations.

There had to be right words to say in that moment. Those words surely existed. But if they did, she never found them. She should have, but they never occurred to her. She knows she got up somehow and called for help. She knows she found Deniz a blanket and stayed by his side until help arrived. She knows she helped him stand and hugged him as he cried. She knows she did it all, but she can’t quite remembered doing it. It’s like it all happened to someone else.

She wishes that were the true.

But of course it all happened to her. If it hadn’t, she’d at least be able to forget the look in Deniz’s eyes.

But she can’t.

 

~

 

The sport centre is completely silent and seems empty, which is strange because the day has already started.

There should be life.

But there’s just nothing. Normally, he  would get angry but there’s something in the air, something that tells him that nothing is alright. Somehow Maximilian can tell that something truly bad happened, even if he can never quite explain how he knew. He thought, in that first moment when he walked in, that it was some kind of accident. It’s a sport centre after all. Whatever happened, it’s nothing good, because absolutely no one is where they’re supposed to be, at least not as far as he can tell. He doesn’t want to know, but he doesn’t have the luxury of not finding out; it’s his job to know after all.

Whatever happened, it happened on the ice.

(But then, he supposes, everything important always happens on the ice.)

Maximilian knows that the moment he steps into the office. Because at last he has discovered where everyone disappeared to. They’re all staring at the ice rink below them, and he has no choice but to walk closer and look too. Later, much later, he wishes he’d forgotten all about his job and just turned around and walked back home. He should have just let someone else find out for him. Because of all the things he’d thought he’d see -and admittedly quite a few things had occurred to him, including all the ice having melted into a pool for some strange reason. But Roman Wilde being dead? No, that had not been one of them.

It was so surreal.

What had happened?

How could Roman Wilde be dead?

How could this be real?

Roman has been a part of the Steinkamp centre for so long that Maximilian can’t even remember a time he wasn’t there. He can’t imagine a world where Roman isn’t a part of it, but apparently that is the world they will live in from now on. They’ve never been friends  - they were always too different for that, and he never cared to try and be friends with the other man - but they worked together for a long time.

And now he’s gone. Gone, and he will never be a part of his life again, and that _just doesn’t make sense._

What is he supposed to do now? He’s positive there is something he should be doing right now, but he can’t think of anything. There are many questions running through his mind - questions he will probably never get an answer to. It’s not like he’ll ever bother asking them. Because what would having the right answers change? How could it possibly help? Roman Wilde will still be dead, and he’ll still be standing here staring at him lying on that ice.

Roman Wilde should not be lying there.

He should not have looked. He should have asked someone what happened instead of walking to the glass. Because if he hadn’t seen it, then he wouldn’t be in shock, and then, perhaps, he would now know what to do. Or he would have remembered that his sister Vanessa would arrive at any moment and that she and Roman ar- were friends. (He can’t believe that all of Roman’s life is now in past tense.) And if he remembers it right - and honestly, he’s never been interested enough - Deniz is also one of her friends. Regardless of what has happened in their lives, and all they have gone through, he is still her big brother. He should have found a way to make sure that she wouldn’t have to see this.

But he wasn’t able to do that.

Suddenly, she’s just there. He does try to stop her from moving to the window, but there’s simply nothing he can do. Besides he can’t protect her from the knowledge; he has to tell her at some point anyway. There is nothing he can do for her or anyone else, nothing to say. What would saying the right things to her, or anyone else, change? This horrible thing happened - though in all honesty he has no idea what actually happened - and there is nothing they can do about it. 

He can lie and tell her that everything will be alright. He can give her platitudes and try to make her feel better.

But how is that alright?

How is that ok?

At the end of it Roman Wilde is still dead.

 

~

 

A long, very long time ago - actually, it all happened just a few years ago, but in some ways, it feels like a dozen lifetimes have passed since then - Vanessa had, for a brief moment, hated Roman.

It’s the very first thing she remembers when she sees him lying there. It was during her brief relationship with Deniz. Now that she’s older and wiser - now that they’re all older and wiser (they had all been so incredibly stupid back then) - she understands that it’s not that simple, not that black and white. The entire thing was a mess from the beginning. None of it had ever been right, certainly not her and Deniz. But back then, she didn’t know that, she was convinced that she finally found all she ever wanted. At the time she had been unable - or perhaps unwilling - to see what is so clear right now. And Roman Wilde stood between her and her ultimate happiness, and so she’d hated him.

Right now, in this moment, standing here staring at Roman’s unmoving form, that’s all she can think about it. That once, a long, long time ago, she’d hated him. And it doesn’t matter how fleeting the emotion had been. All that matters is that that it had been real; she’d felt it.

She never apologized for it; it never seemed that important. She’s quite sure that Roman didn’t like her back then either, so it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t important back then and it still isn’t, it’s just that Roman is dead and she can’t think about anything else. She’s probably in shock. Or this is the only way she can deal with this, by thinking about other things that have actually nothing to do with this situation.

How can Roman be lying there on the ice? How is it possible that he is no longer skating across it? How did this happen? What happened?

She can’t move. She should move because her best friend is standing there all alone, but her feet won’t respond to the command. She wishes that Maximilian - who’s placed a hand on her shoulder, which his way of comforting her - would tell her what to do, or that he would do something himself. But like her, he seems frozen in place. She, not Isabella,  should be the one hugging Deniz - not that the other woman isn’t as broken up as the rest of them. But she doesn’t know how to be there for him. She can barely find the strength to stand and breath normally, so how can she even begin to help him? She can only stare at the scene playing out beneath them. And remind herself that she never truly hated Roman. That she had loved him and that Roman, Roman had known that.

 _He did._ Didn’t he?

He must have, despite the fact that they never truly talked about it.

_He must have._

 

~

 

Axel wants it noted, for the record, that despite how he might have acted over the years, he truly, honestly, liked Mr. Wilde.

Oh, he had never been _in_ love with him. Too afraid of what that would mean, he never allowed his feelings to grow beyond attraction, but he liked him. Despite the passage of the years and the many, many fights. He wonders if Mr. Wilde knew that; it’s not something he ever thought to ask. It isn’t even something he needed to know, but now the younger man is dead and it’s the most important thing in the world.

He doesn’t bother asking if they’re telling the truth. Why would anyone make this up? Even if he had thought they might, the look on their faces is enough to tell him that yes, this happened. Whatever this is, all he knows is that Mr. Wilde is dead. The details of what happened still escape him. Did he perhaps fall and hit his head? Was he ill? Surely they, or at least someone, would have known if he had been? Surely someone would have been able to tell, especially considering how closely they worked together? But now that he thinks about it, didn’t he noticed some things over the past few weeks? Didn’t he think that the younger man looked pale and somewhat weaker than he usually was? It was odd that he suddenly quit a job he worked so hard for, but at the time Axel dismissed all of that. So maybe, in retrospect, an illness makes sense, but he still think someone would have at least made a comment about it.

So, how can Mr. Wilde be dead?

How is this real?

And now, suddenly, everything that could have been, everything that was still a possibility just an hour ago, is just gone. He thinks back to all the conversations they’ve had over the years, to all those words that were never spoken. Things that were never important enough to mention, but now that it’s over - now that he’ll never actually be able to say them - he wonders why he never did. He should have told him that he admires him, that he always loved watching him skate. That he truly, honestly, believed that the younger man would win the spot of skate ambassador. That briefly, very briefly, he imagined another world where they could be together. It wasn’t important five minutes ago, but now Mr. Wilde is dead, and he’ll never know any of it. He probably wouldn’t have known if he had lived, but that doesn’t matter.

He’s incapable of thinking about anything else. All he can think about are the conversations that have long since passed, all of them lost. All of those moment that they can now never, ever, ever have. Because Mr. Wilde is dead.

And all those possibilities are gone.

 

~

 

Lena’s hands are shaking.

It’s the only thing Maximilian can focus on. There are a million things he needs to do and say, but all he can think about is the fact that Lena’s hands are shaking. He needs to leave this room and call his mother –and all those other people- because nobody, nobody should hear this on the news. (And oh God, there are going to be reporters everywhere, aren’t there?) But Lena’s hands are shaking, and for some random reason, this is the only thing that matters.

_“Lena, do you want me to call Ingo?”_

She looks at him like she can’t understand why he’s talking to her, but then she nods.

 “ _Yes, Maximilian, Thank you.”_

He doesn’t remember the last time she thanked him. (So, it’s that kind of day, the day that Lena doesn’t even notice what she says to him.)  He knows, somewhere deep inside, that he should call his mother first, but he finds himself dialling Ingo instead. Perhaps he does it because he told Lena he would, or perhaps it’s because he believes that the other man should be told immediately. (Why does he even know his number by heart? Does he really dial it that often? Why isn’t it on speed-dial if he does?) He can’t remember what he said, but he suspects the other man doesn’t care. He could have known the perfect words to say and it still wouldn’t have made anything better. He hears the disbelief in the other man’s voice, but this happened, and they can’t change that.

The silence is sudden, and it takes him a moment to comprehend that the other man has hung up on him.

Not that that matters.

~

 

They’re still eating breakfast.

It’s strange really, when she thinks about it later, that they’re doing something so ordinary when the phone rings. It feels wrong that for them it was just like every other morning, nothing to indicate something horrible had happened, until she spoke to her son and learned of Roman Wilde’s death.

Richard doesn’t believe her - not that she blames him, where she in his shoes, she wouldn’t believe it either - but he also knows that she wouldn’t make this up. What kind of person would? She’s not a saint, in any way, but even she wouldn’t do such a thing. They have to go to the centre and take care of all the logistics - and isn’t that a horrible thing to think about when someone they know dies?  They have to be there for Vanessa  even if she has no idea how to help her. And yet, despite the fact that she knows all of this, she’s incapable of moving, and by the looks of it so is Richard. So they sit there, staring at the breakfast they were going to eat, unable to fully comprehend what has just happened.

 

~

 

_No._

She did not hear that right, she must have misunderstood. Or perhaps Ingo was the one who did, he must have. Anette has to believe that, _she has to._ Because if she didn’t, if Ingo didn’t, then Roman, her beautiful Roman is dead. And there is no way that that is real.

Any second now Ingo will tell her that he made a mistake, even if she knows deep down that he won’t. Because who would make a mistake like that? He never would, not about something as important as this. Besides the look on his face  - a mixture of loss and pain and shock and pity - tells her everything she needs to know. But she can’t accept that this is real because her best friend cannot be dead.

She can’t be here, in this apartment, while her best friend is lying dead somewhere. She has to be with him even if he can no longer be with her. She has to see with her own eyes what happened, if she ever wants to believe this is true. And honestly? Even when she does, she’s not sure she will believe it.

 

~

 

This cannot be Ingo’s life.

It can’t be.

This is not real, there’s absolutely no way. How did this even happen? What had happened? The very first thing he thinks is that he has to call _Hasse_ , but of course that is something he can never do again. Because one of the best friends he’s ever had, one of the best friends he’ll ever have, is dead and no longer a part of this world. His hands are shaking. This is important somehow, though he has no idea why. He can’t believe that the last conversations he will ever have with Roman, will be about something as random as borrowed scuba gear. How can the last thing he every says to him be: ‘Ok, that’s enough hugging?’ If he could just go back to that moment, he’d never let his best friend go, and maybe then he’d be able to change what happened. (He can’t, he knows that, but it’s all he can think about.)

How can this be real?

The borrowed scuba gear is lying on the couch - he noticed it this morning. Roman must have dropped it off when he was out. Roman had left him a note, he’d read it earlier, but it was nothing earth-shattering. Just a simple ‘thank you’ and ‘I’ll see you later.’ Just a simple note that could have been written at any time in their lives. It hadn’t been important when he first read it but now? Now that is the last note Roman will ever write to him and that makes it the most important piece of paper in the world. _(See you later,_ the not reads, as if Roman had been completely sure that he would. But later, for Roman at least, would never come.)

How can that simple note be the end of their years-long-friendship?

How?

He has to stop thinking about this, he has to. Because if he doesn’t he’ll start crying and he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to stop.

He can’t cry.

Not now.

Maybe not ever.

 

~

 

Regardless of how it happens, death is always unexpected and harsh. Even when you know it’s coming. Even if you’ve had time to get used to the idea and to prepare for the eventuality, it is still completely unexpected. Deniz understands this now.

He might have, potentially, understood that _before_ as well. But before, this had just been an abstract, something that would happen but didn’t seem real. He’d known Roman would die, and he’d known it would be soon, but it’s like his brain just wouldn’t accept it. It had seemed like that eventuality was so far away that he shouldn’t even think about it, even if he knew that it was coming closer every second. It’s just as horrible, just as painful as it would have been, had he not know. And now, now that it’s all over, he’s not entirely sure whether he would have preferred not to know.

Whether he knew or didn’t, whether he wanted to accept it or not. Whether he understood, in some abstract way how much it would hurt. It all means nothing now. Because Roman is dead now, and absolute strangers are wheeling him away. And everything - other people talking, thoughts, memories, all of it - is just background noise. He’s all alone now, he’ll always be alone from now on. Despite the fact that Isabelle is standing by his side and that Vanessa is suddenly there as well - when did she get here? He didn’t even see her coming. She squeezes his hand, and he can tell she is thinking of something to say, but she decides, in the end, that silence is far better. There is nothing to say, after all.

Because they’re wheeling Roman away.

And he has to let him go.

 

~

 

There is nothing strange about this morning. Nothing to indicate that something irreversible has happened so close by. He’s simply setting up the bar with Tom, like every other morning, and there is nothing to show that the world has changed. At least not until he looks up, glances at the Steinkamp centre, and sees the ambulance in front of it. But even in that moment, the enormity of what happened didn’t register with him. How could it have, after all? Why would someone you know dying be the first thing you think about when you see an ambulance?

It’s the way Deniz stands there, like a lost little boy – quite suddenly reminding Marian of that lost little boy he’d left behind when he divorced his mother. It’s strange because Deniz is a grown man and he should not look that lost, that devastated. But of course, he does. It proves to him that something horrible has actually happened, something that he cannot fix. He moves towards his boy without thinking, without considering he’s leaving his bar completely unattended. What does that even matter? What does his bar matter when his son is just standing there, lost and broken, looking at the ambulance as if it has taken the world from him.

He doesn’t ask what happened. He should, but when he finally stands in front of Deniz, the words just won’t come. Tom is the one who asks Vanessa. It doesn’t look like Deniz would have given an answer, even if he’d thought to ask.

_“Roman is dead.”_

_There is no way I heard that right,_ is the first thought that jumps into Marian’s head. That can’t actually have happened. He wants to tell them to stop lying to him. But Vanessa’s voice is so filled with pain and his son looks so lot that Marian knows, even if he doesn’t want to accept it, that it is the truth. He should say something right now, something that will help his boy, something meaningful and powerful, but the words never come. All he can do is put his arms around him and pull him close, showing him without words that he is there, and that he is not going anywhere. Deniz clings to him like a scared little boy - it’s the same way he clung to him when Marian left him and his brother behind. He thinks, briefly, that even if he never manages to find the right words to say, he at least knows not to let his little boy go. Not this time.

 

~

 

 

Nobody thought to call him.

He’d hold it against them but Florian honestly doesn’t think they did it on purpose. (Later, much later, he’ll check his phone and he’ll realize that Lena did send him a message, but by then it will, of course, be too late.) Deniz looks lost and broken - a fact that he noticed at the time but didn’t really register until much later. Even then, he will never quite remember what exactly the look on Deniz’s face was, just a vague memory of it. It makes sense too.  Because the ambulance is standing behind them, and Deniz is looking at him, and Florian didn’t pay attention to anything.

Deniz never calls him, because he’s lost and broken, and everyone else just forgot about him. He will not hold it against them. Or maybe he will, just a little, because they should have remembered him. (The only one he doesn’t blame, at all, is Deniz.) Because Roman is _his_ big brother and he is dead. Roman, the one who promised him that he would hang on for as long as he could, that they would be spending today together. He is dead, and all of his promises mean nothing in the end. Deniz never actually tells him. Florian suspects he can’t bring himself to say it out loud. It doesn’t matter. He would have still know. It’s the look in Deniz’s eyes, because there is only one thing that will make him look that lost and broken. And that is the fact that their Roman has finally succumbed to the brain tumour that had quite suddenly snuck up on them.

But he can’t be dead.

He can’t be.

Because he _promised._

The ambulance drives past them slowly and all Florian can think is _no, no, they’re wrong. This didn’t happen. This didn’t  happen._ Lena is there suddenly, talking to him, saying something - perhaps something important - but Florian can’t hear anything right now. He just says the first thing that comes to mind.

_“I have to go see Roman…we’re going to spend the day together….”_

Because Roman can’t be dead, he can’t be. Florian is not ready for that. He’d like to live in the word where his brother is still alive for just a little bit longer.

He’s not ready.

None of them are. But then they never would have been.

 

~

_“Everything is going to be fine.”_

_~_

 

 

It is not until Florian is standing in front of him that Deniz realizes he should have called him.

But he’d been unable to think of anything but the fact that Roman was lying unmoving in his arms. So perhaps, in some way, he can be forgiven for not calling him. He doesn’t have any strength left  - it’s like it all disappeared along with Roman - and there is nothing he can say that will help the younger man. He should do something, he knows that, because Roman is dead and he is all that Florian has now, and he’d promised.

 ( _“You’ll take care of Florian, won’t you Deniz? You’ll make sure he’s alright, you won’t leave him alone?”_

_“Of course I’ll take care of him, you don’t even have to ask me that.”_

_“I know, but please, just promise me.”_

_“Okay, if it makes you feel better: I promise.)_

There’s nothing he can do or say, because no matter what Roman will still be dead. He can -  maybe he even should - hug Florian, that’s what Roman would do, but Deniz can’t make himself move. He’s still so cold, so numb, so lost. He can’t believe it happened, can’t believe this is their world now. So he says nothing, not even what happened, but Florian isn’t an idiot: he _knows._ The ambulance is moving now, and he doesn’t even think about it, he just follows it. He can’t let Roman go, not yet, even if of course the option of holding on to him is already gone. Besides he can’t follow the ambulance forever. Soon - far too soon - it will be gone, just like Roman is.

 

~

 

_“Everything is going to be fine.”_

_(Except, it won’t be, not really. It can’t ever be fine again, Deniz knows that but he needs to say it, needs to make Roman believe it because there is nothing else left to say.)_

_“Everything is going to be fine.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**_Anger_ **

_A strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure  
or hostility._

 

_~_

“ _This isn’t fair.”_

_“Why me?”_

_~_

Of course, no matter how much Florian might want to, he can’t deny the truth forever. The truth, after all, is grand and harsh, and there is no way he can actually ignore it. So he has to accept it, has to acknowledge the fact that his brother is dead and that there is nothing he - or anyone else, for that matter - can do about it. At first, he can’t really feel anything; he’s so numb, or perhaps he isn’t, perhaps the grieve that’s threatening to overwhelm him is just too big for him to comprehend, to even consider accepting. He has to, of course, because there is no way he can change anything, but that doesn’t make it easier.

The first thing he feels is anger. Anger at Deniz for not fighting harder, for not making Roman rest  - it doesn’t matter that his brother did not want to; he should have made him. Anger at Roman for leaving him here all alone, for not trying harder, for not _staying._ Anger at the world and the universe and God and everyone else for taking his big brother away from him. Mostly though, mostly he’s angry at himself, for not finding the right way to help his brother, for not making him fight.

It’s all too much.

All that he’s feeling has to spill over at some point. And when Deniz  - so broken, and lost, and grieving just as much as he is - sits there, just telling him about Roman’s last day, the anger finally boils over. Suddenly he’s yelling, and he’s not even sure what he is says nor does he know what it is that Deniz says to him. It’s one of those fights that don’t matter, that never will, but that need to happen anyway. He can yell forever, but it won’t change anything. He’s not even sure who he’s yelling at: himself, Deniz or Roman, who can no longer hear them.

He can’t breathe. He can’t stay here, either, he can’t stand being in this apartment. He can’t stand being in the place where Roman used to live, where his stuff is scattered around them. He can’t stand being near Deniz or anyone else, right now, and he just needs to get _out._ And so he runs. Past Anette - who looks shocked and probably heard everything he said, and he should probably care about that, but he doesn’t. Past all those people going about their normal lives and down the path Roman used to take on his way to the Steinkamp centre. He knows he can’t run forever, it’s physically impossible, but he can’t stop either. If he stops, he has to think, and he doesn’t want to do that right now, or ever, if he can actually help it.

 _Just keep going, Florian,_ he tells himself, _just keep going._

 

~

 

How could Roman not have told her he was ill? How could Deniz - and Florian, but she’s never been close to him; Deniz is her friend, that’s what matters -  not say anything? How could she not have noticed anything? Surely, she should have been able to tell, there must have been clues scattered around. Did she just ignore them, thinking there was some other explanation for the way Roman was acting - and now that she knows the truth she can acknowledge that Roman was acting very, very strange. Had she been too busy to see that anything was going on? So busy with her own life that she had been unable to tell that something was wrong with one of her best friends? Or had Roman just been so good at hiding what was going on, at pretending that everything was ok, that it was impossible to tell? How could she not have seen it? How could they not have _told her?_

They should have told her, they should have told everyone; they all deserved to know. She - and everyone else - should have been allowed to say goodbye instead of finding out they were too late. She would have found a way to help him, would have spent time with him, she should have been there. And if he had told her, she would have been, but for some reason they’d decided that she didn’t deserve to know (which she did.) Deniz, at the very least, should have told her because he would have known. He would have understood how hard it would be to realize she could have said goodbye but didn’t get the change. He should have warned her that sometime soon they would have to live in a world without Roman. How could he do this to her? Ingo is somewhat calmer than her  when he hears -  she’s not sure whether he is calm, or if he’s just in shock - but she can’t be calm and there are no words that will calm her down.

Marian is defending Deniz. She can’t understand how anyone could even consider doing that. Anette knows that Deniz is his son, but Marian should still understand that what his son did is so wrong. That it’s unforgivable that Deniz chose not to tell her.

_“I barely talked to him over the past few months, and why? Because I was completely wrapped up in my own problems and I wasn’t there for my best friend who must have been going through hell. And I’ll never forgive Deniz for that.”_

And she knows - knew it while she was saying it - that she has gone too far, that she has stepped over some invisible line. But she can’t stop herself; she had to say it out loud because someone had too. But in all honesty - especially when she thinks about it later - she should have waited. Marian is angry, she can tell, but no matter how angry he is, he still sounds completely calm when he starts talking, something she envies him for.

_“Listen, Anette, Deniz had a bloody hard time keeping this secret. He did it because he loved Roman, so cut him some slack”_

She should answer, but the right words - whether in agreement or still in anger - have disappeared, so instead Anette just leaves. She knows, even if she can’t accept it yet, that Marian is right. She knows that if Roman had asked her, she too would have kept this secret because it was Roman’s life and his choice. But she’s still angry at Deniz because she can’t be angry at Roman anymore.

 

~

 

His phone keeps ringing.

Deniz has no idea who’s trying to call him - he suspects it’s his father, trying to figure out if he is at least somewhat alright - but he doesn’t bother getting up. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now. He knows it might not be his father - it could be literally anyone else: Ingo, or Vanessa, or some random person from the Steinkamp centre - but he just doesn’t seem to care. The only person he wants to talk to, the one person he wishes would call, never will again. So he can’t bring himself to care about whomever it is that is calling him right now. He’ll check later.

What is he supposed to do now? It’s strange, really, but despite the fact that he knew this moment was arriving, he never truly thought about what would come after. He never sat down to figure out what he should or would do after Roman was no longer a part of the world. He should have done it, he knows that, but not even Roman ever talked about it. Maybe Roman hadn’t even considered what he and Florian would do after his death, which is logical because he would no longer be there, so what did he care? (This is unfair, Deniz knows that, because Roman loved them.) Deniz knows why he didn’t do it. He’d been unable to imagine a world without Roman, it had made him ill. And now here he is, sitting at the table in their (his now, forever his, no longer theirs because there is no them anymore) apartment, just staring straight ahead.

He doesn’t know what to do. Even if he had thought about it before, he still wouldn’t know. All he does is sit there and listen to his phone ring again and again and again.

He never answers.

Because it will never be Roman, and everyone else is unimportant right now.

 

~

 

The Steinkamp centre is completely silent.

It has never been this silent before, not in  all the years he has been working here. Some people have gone back to work -actually he thinks that people are just keeping busy doing random things, just so they can forget what happened. Axel just sits at his desk, stares at the his computer screen, unable  to concentrate on anything but what happened. He knows he should be doing something; he knows that, he just can’t seem to. Someone -he thinks it was Richard, but he has absolutely no idea - has already posted the announcement on their site, but surely, surely there must be something else he can do.

He should just go to Mr. Wild’s apartment and offer his condolences to the younger man’s boyfriend and brother in person. _That would mean something._ At some point, someone else will go, he knows that, but he still feels as if he should go as well, even if he isn’t a personal friend. Because he has to do _something._ Because he truly, honestly, liked Mr. Wilde and he should let someone know that, even if he doesn’t actually say it out loud. Nobody stops him when he leaves; any other day someone would have already said something, but it’s just that kind of day. And then, suddenly, before he’s ready he’s standing in front of the apartment  - he didn’t even notice how fast he moved - and he has no idea what he is going to say. He probably should have thought about that before getting here. In all the years he has known him, Mr. Öztürk has never looked like this, so lost and broken. Not that he’s surprised in any way, but still it’s strange. He really, really should have written down what he was going to do or say because now he’s just standing here like an idiot. The only thing that occurs to him is making tea, so that’s what he finds himself doing.

_“I really liked Mr. Wilde.”_

The other man is looking at him, trying to figure out why he’s here - at least that’s what he thinks Mr. Öztürk is doing, it’s what he would do if he were in his shoes. He doesn’t know whether or not he believes Axel, but in some strange way that’s not the important part. The important thing is that he did like Mr. Wilde and someone should know that. He truly, honestly, hopes Mr. Wilde knew that.

 _“You know Mr. Wilde and I we had goals,”_ he has no idea where he’s going with this, but once he starts talking the words just keep coming. Whatever he’s going to say now is probably, in some strange way, exactly what he should say, even if he still doesn’t know what that is.   _“He in sports and I in business. And one needs goals and people whom you trust…and Mr. Wilde was a person who was…”_

_“Roman was…”_

Axel truly, honestly, can’t believe that the both of them are sitting here at this table, drinking tea (well, they’re not actually drinking the tea, they’re just holding the cups, but still), and talking about Mr. Wilde in the past tense. But that’s all he will ever be from now on: the past. _“Yes, only the best die young.”_

And isn’t that the truth. Roman was the best man he ever knew, and he just died. And he - and Maximilian and so many others - are such horrible people. He can acknowledge that even if it’s only to himself. And they just keep on surviving, just keep on going destroying other people’s lives. (He did that to Mr. Wilde once too, didn’t he? He was so angry at the way Richard was treating him, so confused about his feeling and himself that he’d just gone and thrown the other man under the buss.) Axel didn’t deserve to live, not really, and Mr. Wilde died when he didn’t deserve too. That’s life, he supposes, nobody said it would be fair. He’s run out of words, and he has no idea what to do or say now. _“Do you have a wish?”_ Mr. Öztürk is looking at him as if he’s gone insane, and perhaps he has. _“I mean for the bouquet. I’ve got ‘The city of Essen and its people mourn for an exceptional athlete, a very special person.’”_ His voice is shaking now and tears start welling in his eyes, but he will not cry here. The last thing the other man needs right now is to take care of him. 

_‘I think that’s okay.’_

_‘Or we could shorten it.’_

But then it feel so short already. Surely, there is more that they can and should say about Mr. Wilde. Surely, far more words are needed to express how they feel about losing him. But none of them come to mind, and the other man is saying it’s okay. Besides what do the words on the bouquet even matter? _“If you run into anything….if there’s anything with the authorities….I’ll help you. Of course, the same applies to Mr…Mr. Wilde’s brother.”_ And he means it, from the bottom of his heart, he does. He doesn’t care whether or not the other man believes him: he will help him if he needs something. Because Roman Wilde had been very important, and the fact that he is no longer here should matter. (Oh, the things he should have done and said before he ran out of time, if only he’d known he was.)

_“Thank you.”_

There is nothing else left to say, and if he stays here much longer, he will start crying. So he stands, suddenly, whispers his goodbye - because he can’t leave without saying goodbye, that would be rude (like that matters), and just leaves. He never drank his tea, he just held the cup in his hands, like holding on to something actually helped him. Perhaps it did. He truly wishes there is more that he can do. But he can’t think of anything.  

~

 

He doesn’t move after Axel leaves.

Deniz truly didn’t expect the other man to show up, but Axel’s  grieve and pain were earnest, so he knows that everything he said was the truth. He knows that if he needs help, he can just call Axel, not that he will ever do that. It would just be strange. But then he might, he can’t predict the future after all. (If he could, he would not be sitting here, of that he is sure.) He’d forgotten that there had been a time when the other man had liked Roman as more than a friend, but he didn’t known they were still such good friends - maybe they weren’t. Not being friends doesn’t mean you can’t feel something when the other person dies. But the other man’s condolences were sincere, and that was strangely comforting. He didn’t even think about Roman’s fans until Axel mentioned the bouquet. Deniz is going to go ahead and assume that the other man - or perhaps someone else at the Steinkamp centre - is going to do deal with them because he does not have the strength for it.

He can’t stand being in this place anymore. He can’t handle the possibility of another conversation like that - even if it can be barely qualified as a conversation. He can’t be here, this place that he and Roman called home, not if it will never be their home again. There’s nowhere he can turn without seeing Roman in some way, it’s almost as if he can walk through the door at any time. He needs to be somewhere, anywhere else. He doesn’t even notice the fact that he’s packed a bag - and thankfully, remembered to write Florian a note. He’s not even sure where he’s going, but that doesn’t matter.

~

 

None of this makes any sense at all.

Vanessa stares at her phone as she keeps calling Deniz, even though she knows he won’t answer, at least not right now. There is no way he wants to see or talk to anyone right now - she doesn’t want to, so how can she expect him to? But she still calls him because she needs him to know that she is here when he is ready.

It’s strange, the way things are now. It’s strange to think that Roman won’t simply be at the apartment or training at the centre. That he’s no longer just a call away. That like her sister, he has left forever, that they are both beyond reach now. It’s so surreal to think that the two of them - Roman and Jennifer - had been such good friends for such a long time, and now they are both dead. It’s so wrong that neither one of them will ever be at the centre again, that neither one will ever soar across the ice that had been their home again.

That they are both gone now.

And they left the rest of them here, on their own.

 

~

Florian knows that he shouldn’t have yelled at Deniz.

He thinks he might have known that while he was yelling, but at the time, he wasn’t able to stop himself. It was wrong, he knows, but at the same time, it was also right. That doesn’t mean he should have done it. He’ll apologize when he sees him, even if he doesn’t know how. They’ll talk when he gets home, he thinks, but when he gets there Deniz is nowhere to be found.  And while a part of him thinks this might not be the best idea - he doesn’t want to be alone - mostly he thinks this is the best for both of them. Just a day or two to breathe easier. (If they ever will, of course.)

He looks around the apartment and wonders, suddenly, if this is actually still his home. He has considered it his home for quite some time - far more than his parent’s house had ever been - but now that his brother is dead, he wonders if it still is. Deniz will never make him leave, he knows that, but having a place to live is not the same as having a home, now is it? He never bothers asking Deniz, not because he doesn’t want to know but because there is a small part of him that thinks the other man might say something that will tell him that it’s no longer his home.

He never asks any of it, and he never apologizes for yelling either, not even when he returns a few days later. (Maybe, he should have, but he doesn’t, because he doesn’t know how.)

It doesn’t matter, when he comes back Deniz doesn’t seem to be holding any of it against him. Like in some way he understands, and he probably does, that it was something that Florian needed to do in that moment.

Briefly, he wonders who Deniz yelled at.

 

~

 

Looking back, with all the knowledge he has now, everything makes so much more sense.

He had never been able to understand why Deniz still looked so sad and worried, even though he and Roman had gotten back together. Now that he knows that his son-in-law - Roman used to  call him father-in-law, even though he and Deniz weren’t married - was dying, it makes sense. He wishes his boy had told him, he does, but he understands why he didn’t. Still a part of him wishes that they had told him, because then Marian could have helped them all. But it was Roman’s choice whether or not to tell people and Marian  will respect that, even if he is the only one who does. Besides there was nothing he could really do.

That’s the worst part. (Well, except for the fact that Roman is dead, of course.) His son and Florian are hurting so much, they are drowning in grief, and there is _absolutely nothing he can do about it._ He can’t change what happened, he can’t give life to the death, he can’t even make Deniz and Florian feel better, because it happened. That’s his little boy, and he wants to shield him from this pain; he should be able to, but _he can’t._ That’s just life, and there is nothing he can do about it. It makes him feel useless, but there’s nothing he can do about that either. The only thing he can do is be there for them and hope that that is enough. Even though he knows that it isn’t.

 

~

 

The beach looks exactly the same.

Just a few days ago, they sat here, side by side. The proof that they had actually been here is still scattered in the sand. Everything is still the same: the ocean, the sand, the birds, all of it. It’s comforting.  It makes it a little easier to breathe, no matter how strange that is. It’s comforting to know that the ocean will always be there, regardless of what happened to him - or anywhere else in the world. If he closes his eyes, it all still sounds the same, and for a moment he can pretend it’s still _then_.

It’s exactly what he needs.

 (His phone keeps on ringing, but he does not answer. Because it still won’t be Roman and nobody else matters right now.)

~

 

Of the many things he’d imagined doing today, standing at the side of the lake lighting candles in honour of his dead best friend, had not been one of them.

But then, how could he, how could anyone, have imagined _this_?

Ingo watches in silence as the candles make their way across the water, getting further and further away until he can barely see them anymore. Despite the fact that he wishes he could do something else, he’s come to the conclusion that there’s nothing he can do. The only thing that will help anyone at all is bringing Roman back to life, and that is simply impossible. (If they could do that, oh, the people they would bring back.) He can only do what Roman asked him to do. And what he asked for was a celebration of his life. And even if it doesn’t feel like one - how could it after all -  in some strange way it actually feels _right._ Somehow, the candles floating across the water makes him feel that everything will be alright.

He thinks _that_ might be what Roman wanted him to know.

 

~

_“Can we keep pretending for a moment that we have all the time in the world?_

_~_

 


	3. Chapter 3

**_Bargaining_ **

 

_~_

_“But actually it doesn’t matter how much or how little time there is I want to be with you.”_

_~_

 

 

The single most important thing about time that he knows: nobody can control it.

Regardless of what happens, or what they wish for, it will just keep ticking away. Roman is dead. He still can’t quite believe that happened - something else he cannot change. This is the world they will live in from now on. Deniz might spend the rest of his life wishing that things would be different, but it is what it is.

He knows there are a million things that need to be done, and he doesn’t want to think about any of them. (He had never been aware of how much needs to be done when someone dies.) He doesn’t want to deal with this, but someone has to, and it’s not like he can make Florian do everything on his own. He’s already let him deal with far too much on his own. There are still people that haven’t been told, papers that need to be filled, and God knows what else. And the DVD that Roman send him, the one that isn’t actually his, is constantly on his mind. He doesn’t know what to do with it  - actually he does know what to do with it, he just doesn’t want to deal with it right now. He doesn’t want to go and see Marc to give him Roman’s last goodbye. Why did Roman send the DVD to him anyway? Why not skip the middleman and send it to Marc directly? Perhaps, Roman had simply wanted to make sure that someone told Marc what happened in person. If he was worried about that, he should not have been because despite the fact that Deniz doesn’t like the other man, he still wouldn’t have allowed him to find out from the news. Because he knows, he knows that if their situations were reversed, he would have wanted Marc to call him. 

So many things that need to be done, so many things to think about. He doesn’t want to think about all that, but if he doesn’t, he has to focus on the fact that Roman is dead. And he can’t do that. He can’t think about Roman lying motionless on the ice - not that he could forget it if he wanted to, but focusing on something else might make him feel a little better.

It doesn’t, but maybe if he tries it for long enough, it might help someday.

 

~

_‘Hi Katja, and Ben, I suppose, you must be wondering what this is about. Wel,l if you’re seeing this it means that I can no longer talk to you in person.’_

_~_

 

Nobody bothers to call them - not that Katja blames any of them, certainly not Deniz. She wouldn’t have remembered to call anyone if it had happened to her, so she understands. Still, it hurts that neither of her sisters bothered to call her with the news. Instead, after a few hours, it was Ben’s sister Vanessa who called. That actually makes the fact that her sisters didn’t call her worse; they should have remembered that Roman was her friend too. She didn’t believe Ben when he first spoke; he had to repeat the sentence - Roman is dead - three times before it finally sank in. She would never see him again, they would never joke or have a serious conversation again. They would never truly get past their arguments - oh, they’ve been on their way but they still had some ways to go. Now he would never know the things she should have told him - like the fact that he was the best trainer she could have ever wished for, and an even better friend. There is so much, so much that they still had to do, but it’s all disappeared in the blink of an eye, and she can’t quite believe it.

He would have won the ice skating competition, she knows that; he would have become the male ambassador. Because he was just that brilliant. Together, they would have travelled, and skated, and they would have had the time of their lives. And now, now he’s dead and someone else will be in his place, and that feels so incredibly wrong. Oh, she doesn’t doubt that whoever wins will deserve it, but it should have been Roman, _it should have been_. Ben tries to speak, but no words come out. It’s not like it matters:  what is there to say? She knows she should call Annette and Lena, and Deniz, but she can’t quite make herself move. She should be with them - even if her sisters forgot for a moment that she existed - but that won’t happen until later. Not until after there’s a knock on the door, not until after she’s holding Roman’s last goodbye in her hands.

She doesn’t want to watch the DVD, she doesn’t want to say goodbye, not yet (not ever). But she has to - they have to - because whatever he said, it was quite clearly  very important to Roman.

_Play._

There he is, she thinks, alive and happy and so _Roman._

It’s a short video, filled with words about friendship and ice skating. He talks about what could – should - have been and how sorry he is that he’s going to miss it all. “ _You’re the best ice skater I’ve ever trained, Katja, and you’re going to do amazing things.”_ Oh, Roman, she thinks, I was always amazing because you were the best trainer in the world. “ _Don’t feel guilty about being the ambassador. Don’t feel guilty about all the fun you’re going to have. Just go and be amazing and have fun for me.”_

_“I wish you guys all the best in the world. And I know you’re going to have a long and happy life.”_

_Stop._

The screen freezes on Roman’s smiling face.

 

~

_“I love you guys.”_

_“Goodbye.”_

_~_

_ ~ _

_“Honestly, in the beginning, did you think we would ever become friends? But somehow a really wonderful friendship was born. Which might be due to the fact that we love the same woman. I know Annette will be horribly mad right now, and that she’s locked herself in her room. And I’m sorry because I know you’re to one to deal with that. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But I wanted to spend my last weeks as if everything was fine. Even though it really wasn’t. We both know Annette. She’ll eventually get over it, and she’ll come out of her room, and she’ll realize she’s not actually mad at Deniz but at me, which, for reasons of propriety is a total no-go of course. She’ll need you then, Ingo, and I know you’ll be able to explain it to her and I know you’ll be there for her._

_~_

 

His hands are shaking.

He’s only just noticed.

They’ve probably been shaking all along, but for some reason his brain hadn’t registered it. Maybe not though, maybe the shaking only stared when those DVD’s arrived. It doesn’t matter; they’re shaking, a fact he’s only noticed because he pressed play. He’s not ready to watch it, he’s not ready to say goodbye to his Hasse, he’s not ready for any of it. How can this be the end? How can so many years of friendship end with a simple video? How can Roman’s last goodbye be a one way conversation, something he can never, ever respond to? He knows he needs to see it because it’s important. But when the video ends that will be it, there will nothing left of Roman. How could he do this to them? How could he not allow them a final hug, a goodbye, some meaningful speech Ingo hasn’t thought of yet? Oh, he understands why Roman didn’t tell them - at least theoretically he does - but that doesn’t make it fair. Still though, it was Roman’s life and he had the right to make whatever choice he wanted, even if Ingo wants to scream that it was the wrong one.

So _play._

And there he is, his Hasse. He’s so real that Ingo almost expects him to leap of the screen. There’s a part of him, a small one, that knows that this would be far easier to watch if Roman was acting completely out of character. Or that could have been worse, he doesn’t know. Roman is right there, so close and yet so far away, but Ingo can never tell him anything again. But Hasse _knew_ him and that’s what matters.

He wants the video to play forever, to never come to it’s inevitable end. He wants to watch beyond Roman’s final words, to ignore entirely what comes after.

But of course it ends.

( _“Honestly,” that’s how Roman begins his video, “did you think we would ever become friends?_

“No, Hasse,” Ingo whispers. “I did not think we would become such great friends. But it is the best thing that ever happened to me. I hope you know that. I really hope that you do.”)

_Stop._

 

_~_

_“Don’t forget me.”_

_“I love you both incredibly much.”_

_“And I’ll miss you terribly. “_

_“Take care of yourselves.”_

_~_

_~_

_‘Ok, Flo I’ll start with you because I know that I won’t have to explain why I didn’t announce my illness to the world. Still there’s a thing or two I’d like to say to you.’_

_~_

 

 

He had not expected that Roman would still find some way to say goodbye.

Not with the DVD and certainly not with the letter he finds much later. He honestly figured that Roman had already said all he wanted to say, that since he knew the end was coming, he’d made it his mission to do so. That he was, simply, done. But apparently not, apparently there are still some things that his brother wanted to tell him, or perhaps tell him again. Or it might simply be that Roman made this DVD to make him feel a little bit better. (He admits, later, that that is probably why Roman wrote those letters to him and their parents.)

He doesn’t want to watch it, but he knows that not watching it will be far, far worse. Besides, it doesn’t matter how much time passes: he’ll never be ready for, so he might as well watch it right now. At least he’s not alone, at least Lena is here. And yet, and yet, a part of him wants her to go, wants to hear Roman’s last words on his own. But he can’t tell her to leave either - it doesn’t make sense, but then not much does anymore so who cares?

_‘First of all, I’m sorry that we weren’t in contact for so long. I’m so very glad you left Gerenhausen for big town Essen and came to stay with us.’_

He had never told Roman, but him coming to Essen to live with his brother hadn’t been a spur of the moment decision. He’d been thinking about it for quite a while, though he can’t point to a specific moment in which he decided that this is something that he needed to do. He didn’t tell him because he found it embarrassing. And because he was afraid to find out that while he spend his time planning this, Roman hadn’t thought about him once. He should have told him, he knows this; Roman would have liked to know.

 ‘ _In the beginning, you were a pain in the ass, and you know you’re a loudmouth. And let’s face it you didn’t start particularly gay-friendly. Still, we kind of raised you. And I’m really happy I got to see you slowly  grow up.’_

He’s glad Roman raised him, and he’s glad for all the knowledge that he imparted on him. He wishes he’d told him those things, and so many other things. So much he still has to say, so much he should have said. All of it is now nothing but dust in the wind.

_‘I’m so proud of you. I wish you all the best with Lena. If you run into trouble, Deniz will be there for you, and Marian too. Do me a favour. Don’t let everyone mope alone at home. Organize a party at the lake.’_

Organizing a party for his dead brother seems weird and yet, at the same time, completely right. He thinks that perhaps the ice rink would be better; it was Roman’s second home, after all. But he can’t imagine walking into the place where his brother died and celebrating his life just a few feet from where his body lay. He can’t imagine _ever_ walking into that place again - considering he’s an ice hockey player, this might, at some point, give him trouble, but he doesn’t care.

He will do this, though, for Roman. He will round everyone up, and they will go to the lake and light candles. He just wishes Deniz were here as well.

 

~

_“Flo, I love you.”_

_“I wish that all your dreams will come true.”_

_“Take care of yourself.”_

_~_

_~_

Marian is the one who calls him.

If he’s being completely honest, Oliver is kind of surprised that Marian remembered to do that. Oh, they are still friends, but things were, inevitably, different. But considering what had just happened, Roman dying, he would never have blamed Marian if he had forgotten all about him. After all, he thinks later, when somebody you care about dies, that person that moved away to Africa years ago is probably the last person you think about. He wouldn’t have, at least, but Marian _had._ Roman hadn’t forgotten about him either, hadn’t forgotten they had once been close friends and had sent him his final goodbye. Oliver is grateful - he is, he truly, truly is - but he also wishes that the DVD didn’t exist. It’s so weird and surreal.

Perhaps if he’d stayed, everything would now be different. The guilt is almost overwhelming. Oh, that doesn’t make sense, he knows that. He’s completely aware of the fact that staying in Essen would not have saved Roman. He could not have changed what happened. He’s sure that Roman saw every doctor he could, so what could he possibly have done? But Roman is his friend, and he can’t help but think that if he’d just stayed, that Roman might still be alive.

He still looks the way that Oliver remembers him. Somehow he’d been expecting him to look different, he was dead after all. But not, he thinks, not when this video was made, so it’s logical that he looks the way he did before. All he does is talk about friendship and all the things that Oliver did for him over the years  -some that form his point of view weren’t that important but that had apparently mattered a lot to Roman. And then, just to prove to him that Roman knew him and would be able to tell what he is feeling, the other man tells him it’s not his fault.

“ _Never feel guilty about leaving Oliver, there was nothing you could have done.”_

 

His words help, they do, but they can never make the guilt fade away completely.

Nothing will ever be able to do that.

~

 

When the phone first rings in the morning, Diana ignores it.

It’s not because she has no desire to talk to people -  there are so many of her friends that she hasn’t talked to in weeks -  but because she simply doesn’t have time. She’s already running late, and she knows herself: if it is one of her friends calling, she’ll never get to work. So she lets the phone ring and promises herself that when she gets home, she’ll call whoever it was back immediately. She’s out of the apartment before the answering machine picks up. Later, much later, when she finally hears Ingo’s message, she wishes she had waited to hear it. Because his voice - so broken, so lost, in so much pain - would have told her that it didn’t matter how late to work she would be. She had to call him back immediately.

She should have answered, she knows that.

But how could she have known what he was calling about? How could she have imagined it? How could anyone?

When she gets to work, she knows something bad has happened. She knows by the looks on their faces and the way they look at her. It had been almost the same when Jennifer died, but Diana had never cared about the other women, so she’d been able to ignore them then. But this? This is  so much worse than that moment. Because this is Roman ,and he is dead She’s not a stranger to sudden death - she remembers how her fiancé died in the middle of her wedding - but that doesn’t make it any easier. In the distance, she can hear her boss telling her that she can go home for the day, and somehow she does. (She’ll never know how.)

She can’t remember when she talked to Roman last.

She can’t remember what they talked about.

She never will.

 

~

 

When you move away, friendships inevitably change.

More so when you move to another country, to the other side of the world. Some friendships just fade away, like they never existed at all. The memories were still there, and the feelings had been real, but not strong enough to survive the distance. (And it’s not easy, Nina knows that now, it’s not. But that doesn’t make it hurt less.) Others manage to hold on longer - sometimes for years - but eventually those too cease to exist.  Some change, morph into something else, but at least those still exist. (It’s logical that it all changes; the circumstances of their lives are different after all.)

Her friendship with Vanessa had survived mostly intact - but then they’d been friends for so long it would have been stranger if it hadn’t. And besides, Vanessa had lived in Boston for a while, closer to her than Essen was. And her friendship with Roman had also survived the move. They had this deal that they would try to call each other at least once a month. (They tried to aim for once a week, but there were weeks that this was completely undoable.) Still, they definitely talked once a month - and in-between, they would send dozens of e-mails - and it was more than most of Nina’s other friendships in Essen. They’d even gone out of their way to pick a day and a time that would be best for both of them. They never wavered from that time, they never changed the day. It was always the same.

Except for the last time.

He’d called her out of the blue, in the middle of the day on Tuesday. She didn’t think that much about it though. Perhaps he just had a moment of peace and thought of her. She should have realized something was wrong - because Roman was always so precise about the time and the day, and he sounded so _different_. But they had a completely normal conversation, just like every other one before it. (She wishes she could say it was exceptionally meaningful, but it wasn’t.) There was this one brief moment though, where they’d talked about friendship and loss and the passage of time. He mentioned, at the end, that he wished he’d been able to visit her at some point. The conversation had been slightly weird, but she was busy, so she’d told herself she would think about it later. And then Vanessa called to tell her that Roman had died. And  in that moment she finally understood what that final conversation was actually about.

She should have talked to him more, she should have visited more. Screw her schedule and her job and everything else in her life. What do any of those things matter now?

Her first thought, when the DVD arrives, is that it looks so small and unimportant. And yet it’s the most important thing in the world. She can’t believe that this is how Roman will say his final goodbye. But there is a small voice in the back of her mind, telling her: isn’t this how you did it? Sure, you didn’t die, you just moved away, but you too could not bring yourself to say goodbye in person. Instead, you send them a DVD. _That’s how you said goodbye_. So why shouldn’t Roman do it this way? Why shouldn’t he be allowed to do it the way he wanted to? (And perhaps that’s where he got the idea from. Perhaps he remembers how unable she’d been to say goodbye and decided that a DVD was better.)

He hasn’t changed at all, she thinks. Death has changed him - irreversibly - but when this DVD was made, he was still alive and as such still the same. But she wonders, briefly, if she shouldn’t be able to tell somehow that Roman was dying, if it shouldn’t be obvious that the end was just around the corner.

_“Hey Nina, I’m sure you have a lot of questions right now. But I’m sorry to say I don’t have any answers .I am glad we were friends, I truly, truly am. You are one of the best friends I’ve ever had. And living together, those few months, were the best time ever. You were the best roommate I could have ever had. You are a brilliant person, a kind person and you have a wonderful future ahead of you. Never, ever, ever let anyone convince you of the opposite.”_

_“I love you, Nina and I wish you all the best in the world.”_

_“And thank you. Thank you for everything you ever did. Thank you for listing to all my stupid and random problems. Thank you for all the advice. Thank you for just being you.”_

“No, Roman,” Nina whispers. “Thank you.”

_“Goodbye.”_

~

 

When he gets back to work the DVD is already there.

It would appear that before he died, Mr. Wilde spend some time taping his final goodbyes. (And that’s the proof, isn’t it, the proof that the younger man knew this was coming.) He’d taken the time to make a general one for the people of the Steinkamp centre. Axel suspects that at some point, the DVD will make its way to him, so he simply goes to his desk, only to stop short at the discovery that the DVD is already there, except, he realizes, it isn’t the general goodbye. His name on the disc clearly signifies that this one, this one is meant just for him. Which means that somewhere in his final days, Mr. Wilde decided that he deserved his very own goodbye. He’s not sure how he feels about that. He should look at it - he will, he knows that, because he can’t _not_ \- but not yet, he needs just a little more time.  So instead, he does other things. He fills an hour of his life with random things, such as ordering flowers and trying to read his e-mails and just randomness. But the DVD is always there and when he realizes that he hasn’t actually read any of his e-mails - he’s just been staring at the screen - he decides he needs to watch it. What else is he going to do? But he’s not going to watch it here. Not where everyone can see him. Not that anyone is paying attention to him. Not that anyone will care about how he reacts. Still, he needs to be alone.

It’s another hour before he finds himself sitting on his couch staring at the TV. All he has to do is press play. That is all. But it feels like he has to move a mountain. It feels impossible. But he does it anyway.

_He has to._

_“Hey Ax… I mean Mr. Scw… you know what? This is my video. It’s my final goodbye to you, so I’m going to call you whatever I want to call you. There’s nothing you can say about it anyway. So let’s start again. Hey Axel.”_

That was the thing, wasn’t it? He always insisted on calling him Mr. Wilde and on being called Mr. Schwartz. Like that was actually important. Like calling him by his first name, and being called by his first name, was the worst thing in the world. He can’t even remember why it was so important to him, he just remembers that it was. Not anymore though.

_“So I guess there is a part of you that is wondering why I have singled you out to say goodbye too. Honestly, when I started these I hadn’t decided whether or not I was going to. But while I was making them, I realized that it was something that I needed to do, not that I can explain to you why. So here we are. The thing, is I’m not sure whether we are actually friends, but we’re not not friends either. So I want you to know that you were important to me. And I really do like you. I kind of admire your stubbornness and strength, even if they could be very annoying at times. You were a good friend - when you tried. I’m really glad I got to meet you, and I wouldn’t really change a minute about our past. Including that time we kissed in the elevator. You know, the kiss that freaked you out so much? Still, I wouldn’t change it. I’m glad it all happened.”_

_“Do me a favour? Please be kind to Deniz and Florian.”_

_“Thank you for everything. Goodbye, Axel.”_

“Goodbye Mr…” Axel’s voice breaks. He sighs and shakes his head. Roman can’t hear him anymore, but still he should call him by his name. It’s important.

“Goodbye Roman.”

 

 

~

 

 

Vanessa spends the entire day in her house.

She calls Deniz almost every five minutes, but he never picks up. She knows that if he asked her to come, she would leave the house, but since he never answers, she never has to. She can’t go outside. She can’t face the world, not right now. She can’t make herself move from the position she finds herself in. All she can do is sit here and call Deniz. She doesn’t leave the house until Ingo calls her hours later to go to the lake, and she only goes because she suspects that she’d regret it if she didn’t go. But the rest of the day? The rest of the day, she spends seated on the couch and calls Deniz every five minutes.

Maximilian is the one who brings her the DVD. Apparently, Roman send it to the centre - which makes sense, she thinks because that’s where she usually is. But how could Roman think that the day he died could ever be usual? Maximilian offers to stay with her, a big brother for once, but she has to do this on her own. It has to be just between her and Roman. (Even if Roman isn’t actually there.)

She hits pause three times before she can actually watch it.

_“Hey, Vanessa, so here we are. Looking back did you ever think we’d end up here? I suppose not. I mean, who would? In fact, for a while there it seemed like we would never be friends again. It’s so strange to think of that time. You should forget that ever happened, you know. It wasn’t that important. You are a great friend, Vanessa. And even if we didn’t always agree, I am truly glad I go to know you. Would you do something for me? You’re Deniz’s best friend and he’s going to need you. Please, please take care of him.”_

_“I’m going to miss you. I wish you all the best in the world.”_

_“Goodbye.”_

_“I love you.”_

By the time Roman’s voice fades away she’s honest to God sobbing. She wishes she could actually talk to him, say all the things she wants to say and promise that yes, of course she’ll be there for Deniz. But the time for that has passed now hasn’t it? All she can do is be there for Deniz.

“Goodbye Roman. Say hi to Jen for me.”

 

_~_

 

Marian takes a deep breath before he presses play.

Like that’s going to actually help. He doesn’t even allow himself to think about it. He just inserts the DVD and presses play. He has to know what Roman wanted to tell him before he died. Roman is smiling; it’s a completely random thing to notice, but Marian does: Roman is smiling as he says goodbye.

_“These last few days, your son has done everything to make me feel good. You should have seen him. He stole gas for me! Nearly pissed his pants doing it, too. You should be incredibly proud of Deniz. You did a really good job with him.”_

If he’s honest he knows he can’t take all the credit for how all of that. Because he certainly made a lot of mistakes over the years - the way he dealt with Deniz coming out comes to mind. He thinks, briefly, that Roman taught his son just as many, if not more things, than he was ever able to.

_“He kept his promise and you’ll have to do me a favour: please make sure the others don’t hold it against him too much. Although we had our difficulties in the beginning, you were always there for me. You were more to me than my boyfriend’s father. Sometimes you were like a father to me too. I never told you that but now you know.”_

 

He had not known that. Roman hadn’t told him - he probably didn’t think it was important. He’s glad the other man thought of him that way though. He hopes the younger man knows that he considered him a part of his family. He wishes now that he had actually taken the time to tell Roman that and so much more, but there’s nothing to be done about it anymore.

_“ Please do me a another favour. Can you look after Florian a bit? He needs a grown up role model in his life. Don’t forget me.“_

 

Like anyone could ever forget Roman Wilde.

~

 

 

 

The entire world changes at exactly nine in the morning.

Actually, it doesn’t, he knows that, he just finds out it has changed at nine in the morning. In reality, it all changes the night before, at whatever time it is that Roman died. But Marc had of course been unaware of that fact at the time. For him the world had still been the same, nothing had changed. (A part of him wonders if he somehow should have been able to tell. But then, he’s never believed in those kind of things.) No for him, the world changes at nine in the morning.  He assumed, when he’d answered, that it was someone from work but it wasn’t. It was Deniz. And he knew, the second he heard his voice, that something bad had happened. Because why else would Deniz be calling _him?_ Everything that ever needed to be said between them - none of them good things, admittedly -  had been said years ago. All they’d ever had in common was loving Roman, and he’d lost him years ago. There is no reason for Deniz to call him, other than to tell him the world has ended. And it has in a way because Roman is dead.

Roman, his first love, the love of his life, is dead. Dead and gone, no longer a part of this world. He hasn’t been a part of his life for so long - not since he chose Deniz - but Marc had always liked thinking of him living happily in Essen. And now that thought is gone. Because Roman is nowhere. For the life of him, he can’t remember what it is that he said to Deniz in that moment but then he’s not sure the other man is aware of anything, so that doesn’t matter. He thinks, suddenly, that that which had once stood between them - their love for Roman - now somehow bound them. As the two persons who loved Roman and who lost him. As the only two persons who could understand what the other one was feeling. And isn’t that strange, he thinks, isn’t it strange that this is how it all turned out?

He’d talked to Roman a few days ago. They hadn’t talked in months before that, but suddenly, one random day, he’d called. It wasn’t even about something important, but he’d left the conversation with the thought they that might be able to be friends again. At the time, he’d sworn that he’d been able to hear Deniz in the background, but he’d dismissed that thought because it was so strange. Well, it’s not strange anymore, all of it now makes sense. Because Roman is dead. He can repeat that sentence a thousand, a million  times and it still won’t sound real. He always knew they would probably never see each other again and that they would definitely never be an item again, but Roman was alive, and that is what mattered.

He just lived his life, he realizes, and Roman had been _dying._

When the phone call eventually ends, he figures that’s the last time he’ll ever talk to the other man. But he’s mistaken. Because the next morning Deniz is at his door, looking broken and lost - just like he is - and just hands him an envelope. There are so many things that they can say to each other, so many things that might be helpful, but the words die in his mouth.

He can’t believe that the DVD he now holds in his hands is all that is left of the man he loves. That when he presses play, he’ll hear him talk for the last time.

_“Hey Marc.”_

He hasn’t changed a bit. It’s just the same face, the same beautiful eyes, the same everything. As Marc looks closely, he can tell Roman is ill - he’s just a little too pale, too shaky - but that might be because he knows.

_“I know we haven’t talked, really talked, in a long time. I miss our talks. I’m not trying to make you feel bad, not at all. I just feel that you should know that you were my first love. My first true love. And a part of me has always and will always love you. I wouldn’t change anything about our journey, not even the bad things not really, because they’re us, you know? I’m glad you came back a few years ago, I’m glad all of it happened, despite all the consequences. It was something we needed. I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you. But you need to know that I truly loved you Marc, and I always will. Even if it’s not in the way you wanted me to.”_

_“I wish you all the best in the world, because you honestly deserve it. And I know that someday you’ll find someone great to live your life with. If you haven’t already.”_

_“I love you.”_

_“Goodbye.”_

He is shaking and crying. He can’t believe this happened. How could this have happened? Why did this happen? Why did Roman, such a kind and good person, have to die? Why was he not allowed to grow old, to live the life he always wanted? Why?

“I love you too, Roman. And I always will.”

 

~

 

He can’t bring himself to look at it.

He knows what it is -  he’s not an idiot after all - but that’s precisely the reason why he can’t look at it. He’s not ready for Roman’s final goodbye. But then he’ll never be, will he? He’ll never be able to deal with it. He can’t deal with any of it. Not with his final goodbye, not with the funeral, not with emptying lockers and boxes filled with random stuff. He just wants to forget it happened, just wants to ignore it all. Florian tells him that it helped him and he needs to see it, and he knows that he does, but he still can’t bring himself to do it.

On the day of Roman’s funeral, he decides he just needs to watch it. So, he presses play and once the video starts, no matter how much it hurts, he can’t bring himself to stop it. He can’t stop listening to Roman talking to him. Not until the sound fades away and the screen freezes on Roman’s beautiful face.

And then, after a while, the screen turns black, and it’s all over.

~

_When you see this, Deniz, I won’t be around anymore. Hopefully that doesn’t mean I still won’t be with you in a way. With all the others I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but with you..._

_You’re sleeping back there, like an angel. You know this day has been one of the best days of my life. What I actually mean to tell you is I’m happy about every moment I got to spend with you and every day that I was with you. It’s weird to say goodbye when you can look forward to seeing someone again. I’m so happy that I found you. That we found each other. And that’s why I’m not afraid anymore. Promise me you’ll look after yourself and keep an eye on Florian._

_Thanks for always being so patient with me._

_Thank you for everything._

_I love you_

_~_

 

Deniz knows life isn’t fair.

In a way he’s always known that. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to accept. It doesn’t mean that it’s nice to feel the rug being pulled out from under you. Not so soon after Roman’s death. Roman, his Roman, has just left this world, and now Vanessa is also ill and dying. And it isn’t fair, it isn’t, but then nothing is. And he can’t deal with this, but he has no choice. He doesn’t really understand what’s going on with Vanessa’s kidney’s - not that he really cares about the details ( he would at another time but not now) - but he knows it’s not good. She’s his best friend, and he can’t lose her so soon after Roman. (He can’t lose her at all, but the timing is particularly bad.)

Oh, he wants to break down and give up, but he can’t. There’s nothing he can truly do for her, other than just be there for her, but perhaps that is enough. It was enough when she was just there for him when Roman had just died. It’s not the same, he knows that, but what else is he going to compare it to? There’s a moment where he thinks he’s actually going to lose her, but then suddenly she’s getting better. And he can finally breathe when they tell him that Vanessa will be alright. Because she’s alive. And that is the best thing in the world. But there is a part, a small part he tries to ignore, that wonders why Vanessa got to live while Roman died.

But that’s just life he supposes.

And life isn’t fair.

He’s always known that.

 

~

 

It’s so, so late.

And she is so tired.

It’s normal, she thinks, because she’s only just getting better. Deniz is here - he’s here a lot, actually and she’s grateful for it - talking about random nonsense. There was a moment, back when she thought she was actually going to die, that she wondered whether she would get to see Roman and Jennifer again. And Deniz is here and he seems so happy she’s alive, and how can she tell him that she’s not the only one of her family that lived when everyone thought she would - or did - not? How can she tell him after Roman has only just died?

Because Jennifer, her sister, is alive. Because somehow she’s alive and now Vanessa has one of her sister’s kidneys. And she’s grateful, but she still can’t believe that Jennifer allowed her to think she was dead. How could she do that? The worst part is that if she hadn’t gotten ill, if she hadn’t needed a new kidney, than she might have never have known. She might have always believed that Roman and Jennifer were together in the next life. Skating together across the clouds.

It’s the happiest moment in her life and, in a way, the worst. Because she’d somehow asked for this, didn’t she? When she’d first been told that her older sister had died, she screamed and cried and begged. She begged God, or whoever was in charge, to please return her sister to her. She would give up anything, he could take anyone else, she just wanted her sister back. She hasn’t believed it would happen of course, and she honestly forgot that moment ever happened. But then Jennifer was suddenly back in her life, returned to her, and Roman was _dead._ And she wondered, suddenly, if that was the bargain. Did she exchange her friend, Florian’s brother, Deniz’s boyfriend, for her sister? Was that the bargain she’d made? Roman for Jennifer? Oh, she knows that didn’t happen, it makes no sense, but that doesn’t stop her from feeling like it did.

She’s still happy her sister is alive though, she just wishes that Roman was too.

 

 

~

_“Don’t forget about me”_

_“I love you incredibly much and I’ll miss you terribly.”_

_Take care of yourselves.”_


	4. Chapter 4

**Depression**

 

 _A mental condition characterized by feelings of severe despondency_  
and dejection, typically also with feelings of inadequacy and  
guilt, often accompanied by lack of energy and disturbance of appetite  
and sleep

 

_~_

_“I’m going nuts because I have no idea how to go on living without you.”_

_~_

 

Every single time Florian thinks he could not possibly feel worse, something proves him wrong.

Like when his father suddenly arrives. He’d finally managed to get past the initial shock and convinced himself he could actually do it, and then suddenly his old man is here. He’s glad his father came alone though, because there is absolutely no way he would be able to deal with his mother right now. His mother never came to Essen while his brother lived; perhaps that’s why she did not come after he died. His father manages to accomplish making him both feel better and worse, but at least in the end - no matter how long it took - he managed to get the other man to listen to him. After the funeral, after that horrible moment passed, he thinks, again, _I can do this, one day at the time, just breathe Florian, just breathe._ The moment he thinks that, however, Axel Scwhartz calls him to inform him that Roman’s locker needs to be emptied. He didn’t even remember Roman had one until Axel reminded him. To his credit, the other man does offer to have someone else clean it out, but even worse than cleaning it out is having someone else do it. In some strange way - despite how things were going - he thought that cleaning out his brother’s stuff might make him feel better. That if he just got rid of the last things that tied Roman to this world and put them away into boxes, he might be able to breathe again. It doesn’t work that way though. Honestly, despite his wishes, deep inside he’d knwown it wouldn’t.

Because it doesn’t matter how much stuff he boxes up: Roman is still everywhere. His voice is still on the answering machine - until Deniz breaks the thing. Honestly, if he had to listen to it one more time, he might have done it himself. He stays out of Roman’s room - the idea of being in the same place that had once belonged to Roman, where his stuff was still everywhere, was horrifying. Deniz has no choice of course, it’s his room too, and Florian has no idea how the other man can do it, but he does. Some of Roman’s favourite food is still in their fridge – things they’d bought before he died and didn’t have the heart to throw away now. He’s glad, in a way, that there is proof that his brother was here. But he also wants it all to go away. He wants to stop hurting this much, he wants to stop expecting his brother to come back. And he wants to be able to get through to Deniz, because he can’t deal with all of it on his own. (That takes a while, but he does eventually manage it by  threatening to do something he would never do: throw away Roman’s stuff.)

That’s the way his life is now: seeking random things that will make him feel better, finding them, and then being bombarded by something that makes him feel worse again. Perhaps that’s simply how things will be from now on. Perhaps his life will be going great, and one day he’ll turn around, see something completely random, and just think _Roman._

 

~

 

Deniz can’t seem to breathe at all. It’s strange, he knows, and he knows that it’s all in his head, _he knows._ Because of course he is breathing. If he truly, honestly, could not breathe than he would have already ended up in the hospital or dead. There is a part of him -  the part that misses Roman so much he can barely think about it - that thinks dying might not be that bad because then at least he’d be with him. But he has friends and family that love him and need him in some way, and he can’t just leave them behind, not now (not anytime soon.) Especially not Florian; he has already lost enough. But that doesn’t change the fact that he _feels_ like he can’t breathe. It hurts far too much, like his lunges are on fire, like they’ve forgotten how to work properly. It’s the grief, he knows that, it’s overwhelming and horrible and he can’t deal with it. But he doesn’t have a choice. He has trouble focusing as well. Trouble focusing on this world because it no longer has the love of his life in it.

But it gets better over time, it does. One day, he wakes up and finds that it’s easier to focus, that breathing doesn’t hurt quite that much anymore. And then, even later, he realizes he hasn’t had trouble breathing in a while. It doesn't go away, it doesn’t, it can’t, but life goes on and he gets _better._ But sometimes - even years, and years later -  he’ll wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. Sometimes he’ll be able to breathe but, it will all hurt, and he’ll turn to search for Roman, but of course he won’t be there. He’ll never be there again.

He’ll get used to it, he thinks sometimes, but of course he won’t, not really. But then why would he _want_ to get used to this feeling?

 

~

 

For as long as he can remember, most fan letters have always come to the centre. Axel has never been sure if that was because the athletes themselves did not want to give out their addresses or if the Steinkamps decided that this was how things were going to be. Still though, it’s different when the stack of letters is just for an ice skater or hockey player they love as opposed to condolences because he died. (He wonders briefly why people do that.) And truthfully, he has no idea what to do with them, nor does anyone else for that matter. It’s not like they planned for situations like these. Should they keep them? Keep them, not mention them to anyone, and send some form of generic response in return? Should they even respond? Do people expect that? Or should they just go ahead and tell Deniz and Florian and allow them to decide what to do? Should they do that to them? Is that something they would want? Axel doesn’t know, he really, really doesn’t.

He knows this: he wouldn’t want to know. He wouldn’t want to be bombarded with letters from complete strangers. If this had happened to him, he would want people to get rid of them, respond to them if they thought that was important, but leave him out of it. But that’s _him._ He knows neither Florian nor Deniz enough to know what they would want. He supposes some people could find some kind of comfort in these letters.

In the end they decide to tell them. It’s far better to tell them and be told what to do, then to keep silent only to discover that it’s something they would have wanted to know.

He doesn’t envy Simone that conversation though.

~

 

His whole life has change and yet, at the same time, nothing has changed at all. Because Roman, his Roman, hadn’t been a part of Marc’s life for years. Because their lives had parted that day he left Essen, that day Roman picked Deniz. Their lives had parted and regardless of what he may have wanted, they never met again. They talked sporadically over the years, and once they ran into each other - they saw each other for about a minute - at some event. But their lives were entirely apart from each other. So his world might feel different, but it isn’t because Roman had never been here _with him._ He’s go this feeling that there should be some kind of proof that his life has changed, but life doesn’t really work that way.

Well, except for the sporadic, random conversations he now has with Deniz. It’s weird though. He’s not exactly sure when it started - not that long after he showed up with that DVD though, maybe a couple of weeks - or even why they’re doing it, but they are. One day Deniz just called him, and he could have hung up, but he found that he was unable to do so. And apparently Deniz was just as drawn to talking to him without really understanding why. Marc thinks it might be because they both loved Roman so much, because he was Roman first love and Deniz was his last love. Because they can both feel how much it hurts, and they understand how much the other man is hurting. Or perhaps, he thinks, it’s because he is the only one who wasn’t there when Roman died, who couldn’t see Deniz right now, and so the other man found it easier to talk to him. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t particularly care either. He feels better, and he suspects that Deniz does too, and that’s all that matters.

 

~

 

She should be helping Deniz right now, she knows. But almost dying kind of changes your whole life, and it takes a while before you get better. (On TV, she thinks randomly, everyone always get better so quickly. She wishes real life were like that.) Still Deniz needs her; he’s her best friend and she can’t be there for him, and that hurts. Instead, everything is the other way around: he’s the one helping her, he’s the one always be her side. It’s not fair. He’s trying so hard to convince everyone that he’s doing better, that he doesn’t need their help. But she knows him, she knows that he’s not even close to alright. Sometimes Vanessa thinks that other people know this too, but they’ve decided it’s easier to just go along with what Deniz is pretending. And that’s just not right; he needs someone by his side.

That being said, focussing on helping her, on anything else, does seem to be helping him on some level. So at least she’s accomplishing something. At least, when he’s with her, he’s not alone, but she wishes she could do better.

But she can’t.

Maybe, she thinks, maybe next year, everything will be better.

_It has to be better than this year it just has to be._

 

~

 

When Florian was a small child, he used to dream that one day, his big brother would just come back home. He was too young, at the time, to truly understand why he never did. Even when he was older, it was hard to understand. At least until he went to live with him and saw the way his father threated him; then, suddenly, he _understood._ But that knowledge doesn’t change the fact that when he was small, he would wait for Roman to come back. That he would just expect him to walk through the door, especially on his birthday, only to be crushed when he never did. (That hurt, it really did. He never told Roman that, there was no need to make him feel bad.) Roman never forgot his birthday, he always got some awesome present, but it was still not the same. And now here he is, older and somewhat wiser - or at least Florian likes to think he is - and yet again, he has been left behind by his big brother. Roman did not leave him on purpose, he knows that, but like he said, knowledge doesn’t change the feeling.

But Roman thought about him until the very end this time. Instead of just leaving him behind as he had before - though admittedly he left him behind with their parents, who Roman had known would take care of him. This time, Roman chose to protect him by giving him his half of the apartment - and when did he and Deniz even get those papers in order? As far as he knew, the apartment had just been in Deniz’s name. Florian had been afraid he would someday find himself standing in front of his parent’s house because he had nowhere else to go, but now that would never happen. It wouldn’t have happened before, he knows that. Deniz would never have kicked him out. It still feels good to have some protection from that though, especially since it’s something his brother wanted him to have.

 

~

 

This was not how things were supposed to go. Not that Jennifer had ever been any good at predicting the future. She’d always been far too focused on what she _wanted_ to happen that  it made predicting what _would_ happen almost impossible. But even if she had been good at it, who could possibly have predicted that Roman would die? There is no special goodbye for her, Roman didn’t think about her in the end. No need to say farewell to someone who is no longer there, after all. Except she was there, he just didn’t know that, and now he never would. (Or maybe he knew because she wasn’t wherever he was now.)

But even if he had known she was alive, she’s not sure he would have made her a goodbye. Their great friendship died many years ago. And it was all her fault. She knows that, she’s always known that. She was the one who had pushed Roman further and further away, until he could no longer stand the kind of person she was. He held on far longer than most people would have - because he was Roman, and Roman had never been able to give up on anyone. On the other hand, Roman had loved her, and he had stopped hating her for what happened many years ago. The anger had faded away long before she supposedly died, but their friendship never got back on track.

But even back then she had known that they could go back to being friends. Not the kind of friends they had been before - that was completely gone - but a new kind, a different kind. But since she had been the one who destroyed their friendship it was up to her to fix it. All she had to do was find the right words to express how sorry she was, how much she missed him, and how much she loved him. If she had just been able to find the right words, than all would have been well. But she was Jennifer Steinkamp and she had never, ever been good with words, especially not the ones that mattered.

The right words had escaped her and she’d ‘died’ thinking: well, that’s that. She knew she would never see him again, and therefore the words didn’t matter anymore. She made her choice, and she was going to live with it. She even went out of her way never to read any news about Essen. If Vanessa hadn’t gotten ill, she would have never returned; if Vanessa hadn’t gotten ill, she wouldn’t have known about Roman. She would have spent the rest of her life imagining that Roman was still there, just out of reach. But of course he wasn’t, not anymore.

And now that he’s no longer here, now that she’s here on her knees in front of Roman’s grave, now all the right words are just _there._ They keep repeating in her mind as if they’re somehow still going to help her. They might have always been there, those words, she might have simply been unable to hear them. Or maybe she ignored them because she couldn’t see herself saying them out loud. She still can’t. They feel like ashes in her mouth. They’re burning her throat, they’re killing her, because what does it matter that she knows them now? Back then she didn’t find  them, and now it is too late.

After sitting there for hours - or maybe just minutes, she doesn’t know (but it feels like hours) - the words start tumbling from her lips. They disappear in the wind, lost forever, because there is nobody around to hear them anymore. At least nobody that would care about them, nobody that would understand. They’re real and the truth, but Roman is dead and the dead cannot hear. Their importance has faded away entirely. Maybe they never were important, maybe Roman was never waiting for her to find the _right_ words. Maybe he just waited  for her to say _something._

She hopes he knew that she loved him even at her worst moments.

She hopes he knows, somehow, that she still does.

 

~

 

Life goes on; Deniz can’t stop living and, in all honesty, he is not sure he wants to either. He wants to go back - to any time, as long as Roman is there - but he doesn’t want time to stop _now._ Because that would mean that he would forever be trapped in this world of extreme pain, and who would want that? So he just keeps going: he visits Vanessa, works at the bar and the centre, helps Florian whenever he needs it, and pretends he’s actually doing completely fine. He still feels like he can’t breathe, he still cries all the time, he still can’t sleep, but at least he’s moving forward. It’s all he can do, it’s all anyone can hope for. He owes it to Roman to continue living when he could not. And it gets better, he can feel it. Little by little, his life gets back on track. It will never be alright or great again - because he’s lost so much - but it can get better.

He truly believes that.

And then one day, he opens his father’s bar without crying and he thinks: yes, yes, I’m going to be fine. He believes that. At least until the box addressed to Roman arrives and he remembers he remembers that Roman had won something in an auction, and he’d been so happy about it. But the thing, whatever it is, arrives too late and Roman would never, ever get to hold it. He would never get to see it in person. And that thought is in some strange way far worse than anything Deniz has thought before this moment.

Because Roman had wanted this thing so much, so much, and he had never received it.

 

 

~

 

“It’s something Roman ordered weeks ago.”

Ingo has always thought that when it truly mattered, he would know what to say and what to do to help one of his friends. Well, that was something else he was wrong about. It’s strange, really to think that there are people out there in the world - complete strangers mostly - that are unaware that Roman is no longer there. Who still expect him to pay for something, who send him stuff he bought weeks ago. Deniz runs out of Seven and Ingo knows, he knows the other man is going to get rid of the box. Hell, it’s what he would do. He would be unable to look at whatever was in it. But at the same time, Ingo is aware of the fact that if Deniz throws it away, he will regret it forever. Because this had been important to Hasse and that made it important to all of them as well.

For the record, he imagined a dozen things that could be in that box. He thought of everything from clothes to cd’s to anything else. He expected something grand, something special. Especially since this was the last thing that Roman ever bought. What he and Deniz found inside, instead, was an ugly statue of a pink bunny. He literally has no words for that. It’s honestly the ugliest thing he’s ever laid eyes on, and why would Roman even buy this? Why was he so happy he’d won this thing?

“It’s a pink bunny….and it’s….really pretty….”

“It’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen in the world.”

And thank God, thank God, Deniz said that because in all honesty, Ingo doesn’t think he would have ever been able to say it out loud. Even if he can’t honestly say he would have ever been able to convincingly  pretend that he likes the damn thing. Because there is no way anyone _can._

 “Oh thank God, “he answers, “Thank God you said that. What the hell was he doing? Was he high when he ordered this?”

This thing was so not Roman that it actually makes him laugh. Why would Roman spend money on this thing? Ingo is perfectly aware that the other man sometimes bough odd things - hell, he himself has bought some weird things over the years as well. Maybe Roman hadn’t cared about what it was, maybe he just wanted to get something completely random and this was the first thing his eyes landed on. Or maybe he had just wanted to get his hands on a pink bunny, regardless of how ugly it was.

“If Roman is looking down at us….”

“Then he’s laughing himself silly because he knows you’ll never be able to throw this away out of reverence for him…”

And then, suddenly, they’re both laughing. And Ingo feels better, lighter, afterwards. Like some huge weight has somehow been lifted from him. Deniz looks like he feels better as well. He can actually conjure up the image: Roman and Mike, together again, looking at them and laughing themselves silly because of that stupid pink bunny. And is so clear and great, and he thinks that might be the best way to remember them. After they’re done laughing, they end up talking about Roman and by the end of it Ingo truly believes they are going to be fine.

He’s starting to think that might have been what Roman was aiming for.

 

~

 

Really what is he supposed to do with it? What did Roman want him, or expect him, to do with a statue of an ugly, pink rabbit? Surely, he expected _something,_ but for the life of him, Deniz can’t figure out what. Still though, when Florian sees it for the first time, and it dawns on him that Roman actually spends money on it, he bursts out laughing. It’s contagious too, and before they know it, they’re all laughing at the absolute absurdity of it. It’s the first time he’s heard Florian laugh in weeks, and for that alone, he’s grateful that Roman bought this thing. It still doesn’t help him figure out what to do with it though. He can’t throw it away because Roman wanted it, but he can’t just put it somewhere other people will see because ,well, it’s ugly. In the end he leaves it in a corner of his room, out of sight and yet not.

It takes a while, he’s not sure how long, but eventually he remembers a conversation he, Roman, and Florian had a few weeks before Roman died. And suddenly Deniz thinks Roman might have bought the pink rabbit not because he liked it but because of that conversation. (Maybe he didn’t, he will never know, but he likes to think that that is what happened. Because that means he understood.)

It was that day Florian found out Roman was dying, and pretending that all was well, they sat down to have dinner.

_“So,” Florian asks as he ducks to get his soda out of the fridge, “do you have to wear some costume?”_

_Both Roman and Deniz look at him as if he’s somehow grown a second head. What does that even have to do with anything? “I mean, in hockey the mascot wears some kind of costume…” He never finishes his sentence. Instead both he and Deniz burst out laughing. And for a moment, just a moment, it feels like it’s just another random night. Like that horrible thing isn’t hanging above them. “If you are both imagining me wearing a pink bunny costume you can stop right now….”_

He remembers sitting there, conjuring up an image of Roman wearing a ridiculous pink, bunny costume as he skated across the ice. He suspects Florian was doing the same thing. He forgot about that moment. It didn’t matter later on, it wasn’t even that important at the time. Just the three of them being a family. But he remembers now: Roman had won that action the next day, and now he had a statue of a pink bunny in his room. A statue that made him and Florian laugh just as hard as they had that night when they imagined Roman wearing that costume.

He likes to think that was what Roman wanted.

~

 

And suddenly, it’s Christmas. He knew it was coming because Christmas always comes, but Florian paid so little attention that he was actually taken by surprise when it was suddenly there. They bought no tree to put in the apartment, they never turned on the radio, and Florian couldn’t actually make himself buy gifts. He considers staying here with Deniz, but the idea of being here at Christmas when Roman isn’t is unbearable. So in the end, he decides to go to his parents - they probably need their remaining son by their side now - and leaves Deniz alone. He feels somewhat guilty, but on the other hand Deniz has family in Essen, he no longer does, not really. He’d considered inviting Deniz to come, but Deniz never went while Roman was alive, and doing it now just seemed too little, too late.

And yet, despite being dead, Roman still manages to surprise him. And now he understand the things he did not understand before: Roman had known he wouldn’t make it to Christmas. He’d known he wouldn’t see the new year, he might have even known in those last few days that he wouldn’t see the next month. And he’d prepared for it. The funeral preparations, the DVD’s, the letters and now the Christmas presents. Florian is not sure what to do with them though, it’s painful opening a gift from someone that is no longer there, but at the same time it’s also really, really nice to know that he’s not completely gone, not yet. In the end he decides to take the gifts with him when he goes to visit his parents. He’ll decide whether or not he’s going to open it when the time comes. He’s got this strange feeling though that no matter what he chooses, he’ll end up believing the other choice was the right one.

 

~

 

He doesn’t go out to buy a Christmas tree, and he doesn’t take out Roman’s decorations for the apartment. He doesn’t have the strength to do anything remotely festive. He leaves the radio off because every song is about Christmas right now, and it reminds him so much of better times.  Roman had loved this holiday so much, and now he could no longer celebrate it, and Deniz has to do it all on his own. And he just _can’t._ Not this year at least, maybe next year, maybe when more time has passed he’ll be able to celebrate again. He convinced himself that if Florian stayed, he would do his best to make sure he had a great Christmas, but since Florian decided he wanted to go home he didn’t have to. And now he’s alone.

The gift Roman bought him - the one he wasn’t expecting - is lying on the table. He’s not sure whether he’s ever going to open it. A part of him wants to keep it like this forever, the other part wants to know what it is. He doesn’t know what to do. He does know this though: he’s going to sit here, ignore the world and pretend that Christmas is not happening. He ignores Ingo and Vanessa’s invitations - he thinks about lying, but what would that accomplish - and he tells his father he’d rather be alone.

But on the night itself, he finds that being alone is far worse. Because the place is far too quiet and far too big and yet, at the same time so, so small. He can’t breathe and he’s so alone and he just doesn’t want to be anymore. So in the end, he finds himself standing in front of the flat share, unsure of what to say to explain that he has shown up anyway. He needn’t have bothered to think about it though. Ingo never asks him for explanations, just lets him in and tells him to sit down. It doesn’t feel like a celebration, though. They can all feel Roman’s ghost in the room, sucking all the celebration out of it. But they still try, mostly because Alexander is a child and he doesn’t understand. It’s not until they get out gifts that Deniz remembers that he forgot to buy any gifts, but then he hadn’t exactly planned to be here tonight either. As the night passes, both his father and Vanessa suddenly join them. They might have come here for him or not. Perhaps they are feeling the same thing he is and they just need to be with someone who somewhat understands.

At least he can breathe here, he thinks. At least he’s no longer alone.

But in all honesty, he still feels like he is.

 

~

 

The clock strikes twelve, the champagne flows, and a New Year begins. Deniz doesn’t want a new year to start because it will be the first one without Roman, but at the same time he wants the last year to be over. But then, for all he knows a New Year might be the best thing for everyone involved. A new beginning, even if it’s without Roman, a new start, a new chance.

The clock strikes twelve, he toasts Roman up in heaven, and for a moment he can actually feel him by his side. Maybe he even is, maybe he is always there. Maybe, hopefully, he always will be. Deniz likes that though.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**_~_ **

**_Acceptance_ **

_~_

 

At times it really seems like everything is perfectly fine, that somehow Deniz and Florian are actually moving forward. Vanessa knows that her cousin is taking care of Florian – and really, she barely knows the boy, so trying to help him through something like this would just be incredibly awkward. Perhaps if Florian had no help at all, she would consider it, but since he does, she doesn’t even try. (Maybe that is wrong, maybe she should be trying to help him, but this is the way it is.) Besides, supporting her best friend is just more natural. Really though, the more time passes, the better they seem, and she thinks the worst might be behind them. But then there are times when she’ll see Deniz and she’ll know, instantly, that he’s not alright, not at all. Sometime it’s because something has happened but mostly, mostly she thinks it’s just the way grief works. (One step forward, two steps back.)

Thinking about it, it seems logical that watching Katja skate across the ice on which Roman had died, was not a good idea. It really, really does. But when she was convincing him to go, all she was thinking about was the fact that Kaja is his friend. And she’d thought, at the time, that he needed to go because he couldn’t hide away from the world forever. It had not even occurred to her that Deniz would not be able to deal with the situation. She knows he hasn’t even been able to walk into the ice rink before and she’s not sure he’ll ever be able to stand on the ice again. (He doesn’t need to, not really, it’s not part of his job anymore. Besides, skating had never been that important to him. At least not the way it had been to Roman, to Jennifer.) 

It’s not until Katja skates across the ice, and Deniz suddenly runs out, that she realizes _‘oh, of course.’_ Of course, he can’t deal with this, but why didn’t he say something? If he had then they could have avoided this moment all together. They’ve never talked about any of it, she’d always assumed he wasn’t ready yet and he would talk to her when he finally was. And it seems like this moment has finally opened the flood gates and suddenly Deniz is talking about all of it. (And of course, of course Deniz would always see Roman skating across the ice, regardless of who is actually skating.) She says nothing, just holds him while he describes to her how Roman looked the last time he stood on the ice. She can imagine it, that moment, how beautiful it must have been. She wonders, briefly, if he has ever allowed himself to remember that specific moment, or if it had been completely forgotten by what came right after. It doesn’t really matter.

Three days later she drags Deniz to the ice rink and forces him to stand on the ice. He doesn’t want to, she knows that, but he has to do it. Because he can’t ignore the place forever. Because the ice rink had been one of the most important places in Roman’s life and that meant it was important to Deniz too, even if right now he wants to ignore it. At first Deniz just stands there, staring at the ice, but eventually he puts his feet on it. (She’s not sure how long it takes, she didn’t exactly time it.)

Before she knows it they’re skating across the ice, laughing as they do so.

For just a moment she can almost hear Roman laugh as well. And maybe, maybe he does, maybe he’s even skating across the ice beside them.

She likes that idea.

 

~

 

When your greatest dream come true, you are the happiest person in the world. And Florian is, he is. After all, they want him to play professional hockey in Canada, and it’s what he’s always wanted. Many people knew that was his dream, but only Roman always believed he could do it. Only Roman told him to keep trying, to never give up because “Someday,” he said, “your dreams will come true.” Deniz is so proud of him, everyone is, and Florian is happy, _he is._ But Roman is not here to share this moment with him, Roman will never know that he actually managed to achieve his dream. His big brother has been dead for almost a year now and he still can’t quite believe it sometimes. There are days where he still expects him to walk through that door as if nothing has happened, even if everything has changed. He knows Roman would be proud of him, he does, but it’s not the same as hearing him say it. But he promises him this: if he’s is looking down on him, Florian is going to make sure his brother will be nothing but proud of him.

He wants to go -  and he will go, he knows that too because it’s what he’s always wanted - but at the same time, he doesn’t want to at all. He doesn’t want to leave the town in which Roman once lived, doesn’t want to leave the home he built behind. He doesn’t want to leave Deniz here all alone – although he isn’t actually alone. Vanessa and Ingo are still here, his father is here and his uncle Cam - who Florian doesn’t like, at all, but he’s pretending he does to keep the peace - has been living on their couch for about two weeks now. Roman wouldn’t have liked Cam, he knows that; the other man’s feelings about gay people are far too obvious (and they are not good.) But Deniz seems to be ignoring it for the moment, probably because he’s family - and honestly Cam did say he wouldn’t be staying for long, so why create problems? So technically, Deniz will not be alone, but in a way he’ll be. Because Cam, the person who will be living here with him, never met Roman, doesn’t miss him and doesn’t care to find out anything about him. (He knows Roman existed, he’s seen the pictures.) In the end Deniz is the one who tells Florian he’s definitely going, no question about it. Florian will make sure to keep in touch, no matter how hard it might be in years to come, because Deniz is his brother and he can’t lose another one.

“It’s ok, Flo, “ Deniz says. “You will be brilliant, and Roman would be so incredibly proud. And always remember: you have a home here, and I am always here for you. I am just one call away if you need anything.”

And so, a few days later, they say their goodbyes at the airport, he boards the plane and he leaves his life in Essen behind. But his big brother? His big brother he takes with him wherever he goes.

 

~

 

There are moments when Deniz does nothing but think about what might have been. Where he imagines the future he and Roman could -  should - have had. It’s hard to imagine a completely, perfect future though, but it would have been perfect for them. Because any future in which Roman lives is perfect. There are times when these thoughts creep up on him, taking him by surprise, and there are times when he imagines that future deliberately.

But that’s not his life, it will never be his life, and he’s come to accept that (it’s taken him a while, but he’s gotten there.) He might wish for different, better times, but this is his world now. In a strange way, he’s glad his uncle Cam is here - despite the problems the other man creates - because otherwise he’d be living alone now. And he thinks that would make the apartment to empty, too silent, and it would make it all so much more real, so much worse. At times it’s difficult that Cam never met Roman and as such doesn’t understand the depths of his grieve, but at the same time it’s also a good thing. He wonders, sometimes, what Cam thinks about it. After all to him, Roman is nothing but a picture and a name. It must be weird to watch your nephew grieve for man you’ve never known. And isn’t that a strange thought? That for some people, people that are important to him and Flo, Roman will never be anything but an old picture and a name. He’ll never be real.

 

~

 

Roman is still everywhere. A few weeks after Roman died Deniz got rid of most of his clothes - no point in keeping all of them after all - but some of them, mostly his favourite shirts, still hang in the closet. On the nights he misses him the most, Deniz wears his favourite shirt to bed and sometimes he can still imagine it smells like Roman. Pictures are still scattered everywhere - Cam had tried to convince him to move all of them to his room, but Deniz didn’t: this was their apartment and Roman would be where he’s always been. Roman’s ice skates - which he takes care of, making sure that someone can still use to should someone want to (not that he would allow it) - are in box in his closet.  Roman’s cell phone - with his voicemail - is still there, he still pays the bill every month, he doesn’t even know why. (He does know why: because it’s Roman’s voice and he can’t let it go.)

He is there, right by his side, in so many ways. But in the ways that truly matter, he has faded away. There are people in Deniz’s life that matter to him, that never mattered to Roman. New people have taken over the Steinkamp centre - they left ice skating behind just a few weeks after Roman died and they’d moved to dancing for a while. But eventually, over the years, it’s become all about football. And he hates that Roman is no longer a part of everything, but at the same time, it’s also better. It makes it easier to move on, easier to spend a full day without feeling like he’ll burst into tears at any point. So far, he hasn’t fallen in love again though. He’s not sure he can or wants to.

 

~

**_dream_ **

_A series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep_

_~_

 

It’s not the dreams that bother him. Because in all honesty, Deniz dreams about Roman constantly. Sometimes it’s just a collection of memories, a collage of happy moments, all woven together in a way only dreams can accomplish. Sometimes those dreams are clear, happy visions about a future they never had (so clear, in fact, that Deniz can still see it when he wakes.) In some futures Roman never gets ill, in others he gets better. In other dreams they’re simply soaring across the ice, just like they’d done before. Sometimes he just dreams of the last time he saw Roman skate (that moment, in which it seemed like he could almost fly.) Waking is always painful, and those dreams always take his breathe away, but he gets used to that. (Deniz wishes, desperately, that he didn’t have to get used to these moments.)

But there are moments – nothing more than seconds really – when he floats between waking and dreaming. When he’s no longer really asleep but he has not fully woken either. Seconds, that sometimes seem like hours, in which everything is still possible, in which the dream he’s just had is still _real._ Seconds in which it seems that Roman is still just by his side, that he can just reach out to touch him. But then the second passes and he wakes, and he remembers. Because the bed is too cold and empty. Because he can hear voices just outside his room that belong to people that never met Roman.

And he’ll remember: _Roman is dead._

And for a moment he won’t be able to breathe, for just a moment the pain an grieve will seem fresh.

But those moments pass, they always do.

 

~

 

Whenever Deniz looks at the ice rink he never sees what’s actually there. Sometimes he sees Roman, soaring across the ice, the way he had done that last time he saw him. Deniz likes to remember Roman that way: happy because he’s where he belongs. At other times he’ll see the both of them skating across the ice. (Like the DVD he keeps watching or that first time they skated together when they were so young and happy, so unaware of what was to come.)

Sometimes all he can see is Roman lying dead on the ice.

One thing is always the same though: whenever Deniz looks at the ice rink he sees Roman _._

And honestly, he wouldn’t want it any other way. Because he doesn’t want to forget a single thing about Roman. Not the good and not the bad. Not the things they got right (and they got things right, of course they did) and not the things they got wrong. He wants to remember all of it because every single moment is _them._ He even wants to remember how it ended because that is also a part of them.

Roman Wilde will always be a part of him, Roman will always be by his side. 

And Deniz will always love him.

 

_Always._

 

 


End file.
